Punching above their weight or falling flat? An international panel on Modernising and Renewing Policy Capability
26 November 2024
● News and media
ANZSOG Practice Fellow, Sally Washington, recently participated in a discussion for the Canadian School of Public Service, alongside Canadian academic Associate Professor Jonathan Craft and Professor Michael Mintrom from Monash University. The session was moderated by Catherine Charbonneau, Director of the Canadian Policy Community Partnership Office. The event was organised as part of Associate Professor Craft’s role as the Jocelyn Bourgnon visiting scholar at the Canadian School of Public Service.
Associate Professor Craft recently published an article in the Australian Journal of Public Administration – ‘Punching above their weight or falling flat? Flagship policy modernisation initiatives in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand’ – where he concluded that Canada and Australia were lagging behind Aotearoa and the UK in terms of their policy reform programs. The panel provided an opportunity to explore policy capability challenges and improvement initiatives across the range of jurisdictions.
Below are summaries of some of the key issues the panel discussed.
What does comparing Westminster style systems tell us about improving policy capability?
The panel was asked about similarities and differences across Australia, Canada, the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand in their attempts to reform policy making and improve policy capability. Ms Washington has been involved in three of those jurisdictions, through setting up the Policy Project in Aotearoa, working with Australian departments and jurisdictions and consulting to the UK Policy Profession, including currently serving on an advisory group to the UK Head of the Policy Profession.
She noted these jurisdictions, as well as many others, are facing a similar ‘policy problem’ including: concerns about poor quality advice to Ministers; policy proposals not backed up by evidence; shortages of well-trained policy advisors; weak systems for prioritization, collaboration and alignment between organizations and portfolios (the silo problem); and a focus on short-term demands to the detriment of longer-term policy needs (like climate change, inter-generational poverty, aging populations).
But despite common capability challenges, organizations and jurisdictions have taken different approaches to addressing them. Some take a narrow view of capability and focus solely on ‘better training’ of policy staff. Many have developed some form of policy toolkit or guides for policy staff. Without passing judgement on any jurisdiction, she argues for a systemic, joined-up approach, that brings together a range of mutually reinforcing improvement initiatives – focused on policy quality systems, people capability, internal and external engagement, and enabling organisations – which she calls the ‘policy infrastructure’.
What skills and competencies underpin good policy advice?
The panel discussed the policy skills/competencies that policy professionals need today as well as emergent trends for the future. An ‘E’ theme emerged for what underpins good policy advice:
- Evidence – evidence informed policy includes knowledge from hindsight (evaluation), deep insight (data, lived experience including indigenous knowledge) and foresight (taking a longer-term view of policy goals and impacts).
- Engagement – giving voice to multiple perspectives in policy advice or ‘putting the public into public policy’
- Experimentation – prototyping, testing, learning and iterating policy options, catalyzing innovation
- Equity – ensuring policy works for diverse groups with different needs
- Ethics – abiding by the principles and values of public service/doing the right thing.
Setting expectations about the skills required of policy professionals, both general and technical, and using them to build the collective expertise of teams, organisations and the overall public service is part of building a high-performing policy advisory system that supports good government decision making. Processes for being able to triage policy problems and move capacity to where it is needed is a wider system challenge in all jurisdictions (often thwarted by departmental structures and HR rules).
What’s new in the way we do policy?
How can governments move away from ‘waterfall’ approaches to more iterative ‘test and learn’ forms of policy making? Professor Mintrom talked about his work on ‘policy entrepreneurs’, research on policy successes (taking a strengths-based approach to exploring what works in policy rather than focusing on policy failures) and some examples of applying design to policy. Associate Professor Craft referred to policy labs, the introduction of methods like behavioral insights, design thinking and foresight, multidisciplinary or cross-government teams, and other ways of organising for better policy solutions. He argues for “loops and gates” to ensure we learn from good practice and process and have guardrails in place to mitigate poor processes.
Ms Washington shared ANZSOG’s work to develop a new model for policy advice – the 5D policy advice model – as an alternative to the traditional policy cycle for guiding the development of policy advice, and an anchor for policy toolkits and quality assurance regimes. The 5D model builds implementation into front end of policy design, includes multiple voices and perspectives, and factors in the ‘demand side’(supporting decision makers to take good decisions). See an animation of the model here.
What are the policy reform initiatives/units doing right and right now?
Institutions responsible for policy improvement are at different stages of maturity – the UK policy profession and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Policy Project have been in operation for more than a decade. Australia’s delivering great policy is more recent and has shifted tack and home from an earlier iteration (from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to the Australian Public Service Commission). Canada’s policy community led by Ms Charbonneau is also relatively new. The panel agreed that some central leadership of policy improvement programmes was important but that building a ‘coalition of the willing’ and a collaborative rather than a top-down command and control approach to the change process was a key factor in successful transformation. While the contexts are different, all jurisdictions can learn from each other.
Watch the video
The mix of two academics and two practitioners with experience across multiple jurisdictions resulted in a rich discussion for the over 1100 Canadian public servants who registered for the event. Thanks to the Canadian School of Public Service for allowing ANZSOG to share the video of the discussion with public servants across Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. Access the video here: