New ANZSOG Distinguished Fellow Professor Janine O’Flynn calls for positive and humble public administration

ANZSOG is proud to announce the appointment of leading public administration scholar Professor Janine O’Flynn as an ANZSOG Distinguished Fellow.

The award was conferred in Canberra last week by ANZSOG Dean and CEO Caron Beaton-Wells, and followed by an exploration of Professor O’Flynn’s career, her recent delivery of the prestigious 2025 Donald C. Stone Lecture at the American Society for Public Administration in Washington, and her views on the value of positivity, humility, empathy and courage in public leadership.

Following a contribution to ANZSOG for almost 15 years, and significant scholarship and practice of public governance and to successive generations of public service leaders, Professor Beaton-Wells highlighted that many in the audience were beneficiaries of Janine’s research, teaching and thought leadership around public administration.

“With a focus on government reform and relationships, Janine’s commitment to collaborative practice has informed ANZSOG’s multi-disciplinary and trans-boundary approach to leadership and teaching,” Professor Beaton-Wells said.

Professor O’Flynn spoke of her first job mucking out horse stables in country Victoria, her excitement at attending university in an era when the Australian government was restructuring the country through industrial relations reform, her ‘accidental’ decision to do an Honours year, and her career as an academic who had continually attempted to have a positive impact on public administration.

Throughout her career, Janine reflected on the powerful positive impact of mentors, including Professor John Alford, a leading light in public administration, and who has been integral to ANZSOG’s founding and Janine’s involvement in the School.

In the US recently, Janine shared the insights she gleaned from speaking civil servants and others reeling from developments under the Trump administration.  She observed how ‘civil servants were anxious – some believed institutions would survive, others feared irreversible damage’.

She said that Australia was not immune to the hostile and turbulent trends in the US, and that maintaining vigilance is essential to defending key democratic institutions such as the Australian Electoral Commission, often taken for granted in the health of our democracy.

Professor O’Flynn has recently co-edited Pathways to Positive Public Administration – a freely-available e-book which aims to shift the discourse on the public sector, provide a counterbalance to a pervasive negativity bias, and examine what can be learnt from stories of public sector success.

“This was an amazing project for me, because we got to bring in a lot of people from around the world outside the club of public administration, for example a wonderful young woman from Bhutan writing about how the Bhutanese managed to rollout vaccines in just 14 days,” she said.

Professor O’Flynn also spoke with passion about the need for more humility and humanity in the work of government and the public service, to rebuild public trust and confidence and avoid repeats of scandals such as Robodebt.

“One of the things that struck me about Robodebt was the distance between people in the public sector and the decisions they make and how it impacts on people,” she said.

“We are creating environments where governments, not necessarily purposely, commodify people’s problems – unemployment, refugees and so on. They then use market solutions to try and solve them, creating very morally problematic areas of government policy.”

Reflecting on the need to move to more relationally-oriented government and leadership, Janine shared that:

“Over the last couple of years, I’ve been working with four ideas: positivity, humility, empathy and complexity, and asking how do they make sense together?”

“To tackle complex, issues you have to have a bit of humility and because if you think you know the answer to everything, then you’re not getting very far.

“You have to be effective and efficient and equitable. No one’s going to make the case against that, but doing it with compassion and empathy feels a very different way of administering society.”

The event was attended by a range public sector and academic leaders including: Australian Public Service Commissioner, Gordon de Brouwer; Head of the ACT Public Service, Kathy Leigh; former ANZSOG Dean and CEO Secretary, Adam Fennessy; NZ High Commissioner HE, Andrew Needs: Dean of the ANU College of Law, Professor Tony Connolly; former head of the Australian Electoral Commissioner, Tom Rogers; UNSW Professor Deb Blackman; ANU colleagues and members of ANZSOG Alumni and Faculty.

Professor O’Flynn joined ANZSOG in 2011 as Adjunct Professor, and was seconded to ANZSOG from 2018-2023 while serving as a Professor of Public Management at the University of Melbourne, a position she retained until she became Director of ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy in 2023.  She has acted as subject leader for foundation EMPA subject Delivering Public Value, and has taught into our Public Leadership in the Digital Age and Deputies Leadership Program.

ANZSOG is proud to add Professor O’Flynn to our cohort of Distinguished Fellows, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with the Crawford School and ANU as we pursue our mission of public governance that people trust.