A walk on the bright side: unlocking the power of positive public administration

Airport bookshops are full of tales of corporate success, but there are few books that focus on the achievements of the public sector. 

Pathways to Positive Public Administration an open-access volume edited by Patrick Lucas, Tina Nabatchi, Paul ‘t Hart and Janine O’Flynn, takes a global view of public policy success and asks what we can learn from them. 

The book aims to overcome the negativity bias that attends assessments of public administration in the media and popular discussion. Two of the editors, Professors Janine O’Flynn and Paul ‘t Hart, joined a panel of public servants from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in February to formally launch the book, and to explore the value of building a narrative, and evidence-base, around success in the public sector. 

Professor O’Flynn said that the concept of positive public administration was not about ‘cheerleading’ but about creating a language to discuss and share success in the public sector. 

“We need to be talking about success and what we do well – not just to political masters, but also to the public. The core of the mindset is simply to develop a language for achievement and success that is suitable and suited to the public sector environment,” she said. 

“There is a lot of attention in our field now to ideas of storytelling and narrative, and how do we tell the story of what the value is, what the public value is that government delivers. And I think, and this is a little controversial with some of our colleagues, I think it’s really important for public managers and public administrators to actually do that work.” 

“There’s also a big source of potential data that is at risk of not being tapped into, which is valuable for the joint effort of making government work better, or democracy function better, or whatever your overarching societal objective is.  

Professor ‘t Hart said that his motivation for exploring positive public administration was the way that increasing scrutiny and criticism of public services had led to risk-averse, fear-driven public administration. 

“I had been observing for a long time was I would call the thickening, and also the politicisation of accountability. More and more accountability being demanded in ways that were ever tougher.” 

“What I saw happening was that this started breeding very defensive mindsets and practices among public servants, who were always concerned about risk and reputation. I felt they were very self-limiting  – understandable, but not very productive.” 

“I wanted to ditch all this disaster and crisis stuff and try to look at things that go well, not just spectacular successes but mundane, everyday accomplishments that people don’t even think of as accomplishments. But that nevertheless are a potential source of insight about why it is that systems actually work.” 

Professor O’Flynn said that her teaching – both with junior and senior public servants – left her more optimistic about the work that the public sector was ding and the potential and capabilities it had. 

Building innovation into public sector practice

Peter Mersi, Commissioner and Chief Executive of New Zealand’s Inland Revenue was part of the panel and spoke of the value of innovation and how his organisation had begun working more closely with stakeholders. 

“We have a formalised process that enables Inland Revenue to go out and engage with tax practitioners as we are thinking about changes to the tax legislation. And we think there are huge benefits in doing that because, while I’ve got very smart people in my organisation, they don’t know everything and they certainly don’t know some of the complexities that are in place in the real world,” he said. 

“Secondly, by that process, not only do we end up with better legislation, but we end up with a group of practitioners who have a much better understanding of what we’re trying to achieve.” 

He said that public services needed to focus more on innovation and being less risk-averse. 

“I think you put those two things together and it’s sort of a bit liberating because it does mean that as a senior leader, you are prepared to take more risk and for the organisation to take more risk in a positive sense,” he said. 

“I’m a risk averse person, I’m a public servant from years ago, and in my private life I’m risk averse, but I’ve learned to accept risk and actually embrace it because that’s actually the way you make progress.” 

Fellow panel member APS Deputy Commissioner Jo Talbot, said that there was an ongoing shift towards collaborating within the public sector. 

“It’s a really good shift in mindset that we’re willing to actually try things, and put money into building things that actually benefit from whole APS. It’s actually really interesting to hear some emerging consensus around the importance of positive public administration and taking this sort of approach,” she said. 

“I think you need to be open to innovation and particularly when new ideas or ways of doing things kind of come forward. The thing I really like about the shift that I’ve seen more recently in Australian public service is that we’re doing a lot more with pilot projects.” 

We’ve recently incorporated a new value of stewardship into our Public Service Act. While we’ve always had focus on stewardship and recognised that as being part of our role, the elements I really like is that it’s focused on looking ahead when we’re making our decisions, maintaining and drawing on a repository of wisdom and experience, focusing on sustaining our core expertise and then building and nurturing those genuine partnerships.” 

Pathways to Positive Public Administration has deliberately included examples from diverse public sector cultures, rather than focusing on North America and Europe. 

These include case studies from Pakistan, looking at its successful response to COVID-19, the story of how Bhutan was able to vaccinate 94% of its population against COVID-19 in just two weeks, and case studies on female genital mutilation in Burkina Faso, and road construction in Mauritius. 

Professor O’Flynn said the book tried to draw out the principle and practices that led to success, and get public servants thinking about how success could be achieved. 

“Like what are the practices of positive public administration? What is it that you have to do on a day-to-day basis? What are some of the things that leaders need to model for others? You know, how do you think about the different tools of positive public administration? 

“We need public servants to be curious, and open to the idea that they don’t have all the answers and need to be humble.” 

“We get stuck in this mindset of success versus failure. But we need to think about how we can track and talk about progress along the way. It’s too easy to talk about something failing within six months, even though we know that it might take us ten years to get there.” 

Professor ‘t Hart said that successful public administration projects often involved broad consultation prior to action. 

“If you want to move fast, move slowly first and spend some of that time on  broader consultation. So many cases of success are about the quality of engagement in the early stages of policy development, or when you start to roll out implementation.”