This article, by ANZSOG Dean and CEO Professor Caron Beaton-Wells was first published in the Mandarin and was written in response to an article by Patrick Lucas, Paul ‘t Hart and Janine O’Flynn examining the concept of ‘positive public administration’
Has the time arrived for positive public administration? Yes – without doubt!
As those posing the question also acknowledge, the pursuit of positive public administration is not new. Rather, as readers of this publication would appreciate more than most, in the public square, positive outcomes often go unnoticed.
Proponents of the growing Positive Public Administration movement highlight an entrenched – and perhaps an easy – predisposition towards negativity in assessments of government and public service performance.
That predisposition, and the attacks it fuels on public servants and institutions, is playing out in the US in ways that even a year ago would barely have been imaginable. And we should not assume that here in Australia we are immune to such forces.
ANZSOG recently hosted an online launch of the book, Pathways to Positive Public Administration, at which one of its co-authors Professor Janine O’Flynn wryly observed: ‘books about corporate success dominate airport bookshelves – but where are their public sector equivalents?’ A provocation more than just a rhetorical question?
Positive public administration research represents a paradigm shift in how we study, evaluate and comment on government performance. It tackles the otherwise pervasive discourse of disappointment and disenchantment head on.
Instead of focusing on failures, defects and shortcomings, the work is intentional in its focus on successes – what HAS worked.
It provides a counterbalancing force, intended not to displace, but to level the playing field in more common treatments of this subject matter, and ultimately surface and highlight how public service successes can be drawn on to galvanise, inform and shape future success.
Whether it’s reforms improving our response to natural hazard crises, transforming the quality and safety of our health pathology services, or shifting the dial on the underlying causes of drug and alcohol offending, there is no shortage of success from which lessons can be derived.
This means the Positive Public Administration movement is not to be dismissed as Pollyanna-ish. It has salient implications for public sector leaders and practice.
Leaders have a responsibility to cultivate a culture that actively seeks out and learns from success. This is a culture that values effectiveness, openness, curiosity, risk absorption, self-reflection and experimentation. A culture that at the very least offsets the Zeitgeist of failure finding, blame avoidance, reputation management and defensiveness.
The power and nature of public service means we must and will always be held to a higher standard of accountability.
We have strong structures for discovering flaws: audit offices, corruption commissions, ombudsmen, the media, parliamentary committees, inquiries.
We don’t have the same ecosystem for discovering or spreading success.
This invariably amplifies a perception of failure as the norm and is particularly dangerous given the challenges facing Australia in a turbulent and unpredictable global environment.
In what was also no doubt intended as rhetorical, the question was recently posed: “Australia now faces the most challenging set of strategic circumstances since World War II. Is it really the time to be launching an attack on the public service?”.
Views on that inevitably will differ. And perhaps we should be asking a different set of questions.
What capabilities do we require of our public services to meet the challenges that we face? And, as reflected on in a previous piece, how should we determine when capabilities are insourced or outsourced?
A public service that is capable of delivering for people and communities is one that earns and maintains trust. Public trust is at the heart of ANZSOG’s Strategy 2030 – because we believe that trust in governments is a precondition for other positive, and necessary, change.
It’s what will allow governments and public services the latitude to take risks and make decisions that have short-term drawbacks for long-term benefits.
It increases the ability of public services to move beyond firefighting, to drive enduring change for the better – to make good on its commitment to stewardship.
It also acts as a bulwark against political tides that can fluctuate for and against an independent well-resourced public service.
The language and lessons of Positive Public Administration are equally relevant for all these reasons. They deserve our attention.
Read more: Governing by looking back: learning from successes and failures: An ANZSOG research paper for the Australian Public Service Review Panel March 2019, by Jo Luetjens and Paul ’t Hart