​​Strengthening Australia’s Reform ‘Muscle’ via SLO: Evidence and Practice – Project Launch and Emerging Findings​

From entrenched disadvantage and climate change to geopolitical instability and artificial intelligence, governments around the world face an urgent need to deliver major, cross-cutting policy reforms. In Australia, progress on complex reform has been limited in recent years, vexed, among other things, by competing evidence claims and resourcing allocations.  

One way these factors limit reform is by negatively affecting public service capability. Limits to progress also reflect, in part, risk aversion in the public service. Reform fatigue, political caution, and fears of public backlash often inhibit bold decision-making. Australia’s federal structure adds complexity, with responsibilities dispersed across jurisdictions requiring strong coordination and collaboration. Where roles, alignment, and accountability are unclear, reform can stall, creating a self-reinforcing cycle in which inaction erodes trust and further weakens reform capability. 

Against this backdrop, a new research initiative, Strengthening Australia’s Reform ‘Muscle’, is exploring how public sector organisations can build the conditions required for successful reform. Co-funded by ANZSOG and the South Australian Department of the Premier and Cabinet and led by Professor Sara Bice at the Australian National University (ANU) Crawford School of Public Policy, the project addresses a core theme in ANZSOG’s Research Program on public sector capability for policymaking. 

At the heart of the research is the concept of a Social Licence to Operate (SLO), which can be understood as the level of ongoing acceptance a policy or initiative enjoys among stakeholders and affected communities. The concept provides a practical way to examine key factors in reform success, including trust, procedural fairness, and perceptions of legitimacy. These elements can determine whether a policy garners enough public support or collapses under pushback from some segments of society. 

While SLO’s relevance to public policy implementation is clear, its application remains relatively novel, originating first in the resources sector and later transferring to other major projects and areas of public policy. It is not yet well understood how public servants interpret SLO, how transferable it is from the private to public sector for policy development and implementation, or what capabilities are needed to build and maintain it in a government context. 

To explore these questions, the project’s first phase delivered a comprehensive literature review of how SLO is defined and applied in Australia and internationally. It found that while explicit references to SLO in policy are rare, many of its core elements, such as trust, legitimacy, and fairness, are well recognised. Terms like stakeholder buy-in and policy acceptance can be understood as proxies in some cases when SLO is not named. 

The review also identifies key mechanisms governments use to build legitimacy, including participatory processes, transparent communication, and long-term relationship-building. It highlights barriers too, such as politicisation, inconsistent engagement, and short-termism, that undermine public trust and erode reform capability. 

These insights are captured in a conceptual model that will guide the next phase, a series of in-depth case studies examining reform efforts in Australia and beyond. The case studies will span diverse policy areas and levels of complexity, including multi-agency and cross-jurisdictional settings. This will allow the research team to test how social licence functions in different contexts and stages of the policy cycle. 

A key question is when and how SLO becomes most relevant. In low-stakes contexts, governments may have time to build legitimacy through partnerships or trials. But during crises, such as natural disasters or economic shocks, reform must proceed on the strength of an existing foundation of trust and institutional credibility.  

This insight, that reform capability is a kind of muscle needing regular use, underpins the project. Without consistent opportunities for bold, well-designed reform, public sector capability may suffer atrophy. Building and maintaining a baseline of social licence is not just important for individual initiatives, it strengthens the system as a whole. 

In an era of complex, fast-moving challenges, this work offers a timely and practical contribution to public sector renewal. The project envisages a refined definition of SLO with implications for principles that guide public policymaking and reform capability. A final report will be published by ANZSOG that includes case studies and practical lessons regarding social licence and public policy reform for the Australian context.