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'Citizen involvement - The Australian experience''
CAPAM Malaysia High Level Seminar
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Andrew Podger
Public Service Commissioner
8 October 2003
Introduction
Let me first thank the organisers of this conference, and our Malaysian hosts, for inviting me to speak today.
The theme of this session is the 'Challenge of the Changing Nature of Citizen Expectations'. This theme is connected to the other two themes of the conference in that our citizens are influenced by what they see happening in other countries and all the things they can buy via traded goods and services, and their expectations are also fuelled by the increasing capacity of new technology.
This morning I will talk about some of our experience in responding to community expectations, highlighting some of the challenges we are still grappling with.
Increased community participation was one of the three key themes of the 1976 Royal Commission into Australian Government Administration (the 'Coombs Report'). [Overhead 1] The others were increased efficiency and effectiveness supported by better management for results and increased flexibility to do so, and greater responsiveness to the elected Government. All three themes have continued to underpin our public sector reforms for the last 25 years.
The demand for greater community participation in public administration was not just a desire for greater social equity, though clearly that concern lay behind the original Coombs Report. It was also driven by social and technological changes that have continued and accelerated over the years since Coombs. We have a better informed, better educated and more demanding public. The technology available has increased their capacity to insist upon more immediate and responsive services. Technology has indeed opened up new ways of delivering services and, in some cases, changed what it is that governments do.
Service Provision Reform - More Responsive and More Effective
Public sector reform in Australia has been remarkably focused and sustained over the last 25 years. There have been the inevitable mistakes, and pendulum shifts, but on the whole each Government has built on the reforms introduced by the previous one. Those reforms have involved [Overhead 2]:
- devolution of authority for the process of administration, but with closer accountability for results;
- increased use of market competition, including quasi-markets within government processes;
- new structures, including some changes to the role of government from providing services to purchasing and regulating services; and
- accordingly, closer interaction between the public and private sectors.
Importantly, for today's discussion, they have also involved:
- increased community responsiveness and involvement, including greater transparency of decision-making and more choice; and
- stronger political oversight, with increased community and media pressure on elected Governments.
Before I illustrate these changes as they impact on citizen involvement in particular areas of service delivery, let me highlight the role of administrative law reform. A suite of reforms since the 1970's [Overhead 3] has opened up public administration to far greater external scrutiny, and empowered citizens to access and challenge decisions made about them. These include:
- the Freedom of Information Act, which requires agencies to release documents on request unless there is clear public interest in not doing so (in practice the Tribunals have progressively narrowed the grounds for not releasing information);
- the establishment of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, allowing formal review of administrative decisions made under certain statutes (such as the Social Security Act). Many agencies concerned have established internal review processes that support the integrity of their decision-making processes, with citizens also having the right to appeal to the Tribunal which can make a new decision;
- the Administrative Decisions Judicial Review Act allows for the lawfulness of any administrative decision made under an enactment to be reviewed by the Courts. The Act sets out in some detail what is not acceptable in decision-making by officials and agencies and provides a right to reasons for decisions;
- the Commonwealth Ombudsman may also investigate complaints made about administrative actions, with some exceptions, and make recommendations to an agency;
- anti-discrimination legislation protects the rights of citizens, and supports the impartiality of public administration (such legislation also affects the private sector);
- the Privacy Act also protects the rights of citizens, and ensures personal information collected is only used for the purposes permitted.
More generally, under the Public Service Act and our highly devolved employment structure, APS employees are bound by APS Values and a Code of Conduct which highlight such attributes for the delivery of public services as impartiality, respect and courtesy, effectiveness and being sensitive to the diversity of the Australian public.
Two examples of reformed service delivery arrangements are:
- the Job Network; and
- Centrelink.
The Job Network is a system of non-government organisations, both profit and non-profit, which have won tenders to provide employment-related services to unemployed people on behalf of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. The contracts link payments to the seriousness of the unemployment problem (for example, the period of unemployment, or a person's level of disability) and to the organisation's success in finding them jobs. The services are now more tailored, therefore, to individual needs, and there are rewards for success. There is also an element of choice for individuals over their service provider.
Evaluations of the Network have concluded that the new system is substantially more effective than the former Commonwealth Employment Service monopoly, at a lower cost. Unemployed people are choosing more effective service providers who are addressing their particular needs, and taxpayers - the other citizens involved - are seeing better value for money.
Centrelink was established in 1997 as a specialist Government service provider, delivering social security and other payments and benefits, and related services, on behalf of a range of departments. Centrelink's main client is the Department of Family and Community Services with which it has a Business Partnership Agreement that sets out the performance required of Centrelink in delivering social security payments. Similar Agreements exist with a wide range of other departments at both Commonwealth and State levels. This multiplicity of partnerships, and the associated range of services provided by Centrelink, have allowed it to become far more "customer focused", and to deliver more integrated services tailored to individual circumstances.
The following table summarises some of the key differences under the Centrelink arrangement from the previous arrangement where services were provided by the then Department of Social Security (and a range of other Departments).
'Centrelink as a "One-stop shop"'
Before
|
After
|
As a specialised service delivery agency, Centrelink has invested heavily in systems and processes and skills development to enhance its customer focus. In addition to offices staffed by public servants, it uses a wide range of private sector and community agents to ensure access to services across Australia. [Overhead 5] It also operates the largest helpline service in Australia, and has developed sophisticated systems for on-line decision-making. Increasingly, staff are recruited who have private sector service delivery experience, and there is an extensive system of career development and training using an inside "virtual" College.
While required by social security and other legislation to pay benefits exactly according to statutory entitlements, it has also built capacity to consider the individual circumstances of its clients. Customer focus is a high priority not only in training but in the culture and behaviours promoted constantly in the organisation. [Overheads 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]
As with the JobNetwork, Centrelink through its Partnership Agreements recognises taxpayers as other legitimate stakeholders, and is responsible for ensuring the integrity of its payments systems and addressing fraud and overpayments.
More generally, across the national Government, Australian agencies dealing with the public are required to have Service Charters. Such charters set out clearly the services the agencies provide, relevant service standards, and feedback and complaint mechanisms. The definition of standards also serves to inform the public what can reasonably be expected at the price the Government, and taxpayers, are willing to pay. Increasingly, agencies are able to report precisely on their performance against the standards and to progressively refine and increase their standards. Feedback and complaints mechanisms are becoming part of a systematic process for performance review, contributing to management improvement and policy re-examination.
Service Charter Awards for Excellence provide a tangible recognition of best practice. The most recent award winners were the Child Support Agency, the Health Insurance Commission, ComSuper, the Australian Federal Police and Passports Australia.
This [Overhead 12] summarises Passports Australia's service standards. Behind this list are specific benchmarks such as for timeliness, including the opportunity to obtain a passport urgently, for an appropriate extra charge.
Communications : More Sophisticated and Two Ways
The words "communicating and marketing", when used in the public sector context, often create unease. There is no compelling reason why they should. Communication, as well as being central to our lives, is fundamental to the operations of our political system, and the management of public sector organisations. The executive arm of government and the public sector are constantly communicating: with each other, with the media, and with stakeholders. Similarly, government has always been involved in marketing, which the American Marketing Association has defined as:
… the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisational goals. (American Marketing Association 2002: 2)
To be effective, public sector communication needs to go beyond the simple provision of government information. It must work two ways, not only by successfully gaining the attention of the consumers of our programs and the clients of our regulations, but also by providing useful feedback on Government programs and services and encouraging sensible changes to those programs and policies. In this way, marketing is becoming increasingly critical to achieving program objectives and the successful implementation of any policy initiative.
Indeed, agencies are increasingly using a communication cycle that complements the policy cycle. A good understanding of external views is important to a department's policy development and program management processes. External groups and individuals need to understand government programs and policies to be able to provide necessary feedback.
At a recent National Institute for Governance Conference "Facing the Future: Engaging Stakeholders and Citizens in Developing Public Policy" Dr Richard Curtain, Co-convenor of the Australian Public Policy Research Network, argued that citizens as individuals can bring three perspectives to bear on a policy issue. The first is as taxpayers who must pay for the cost of public policy decisions, the second is as consumers or users of government services and the third is as members of a community, local or national.
In this age, people are better educated. Technology provides them with easier access to information and better opportunities to have their say. There is also evidence that people are more attuned to government policy making and more interested in contributing to such processes.
This was borne out in the Government's consultation process on the development of the 2001 White Paper on Defence. Defence developed a Public Discussion Paper that outlined for all Australians the concerns that were confronting us and used this as a catalyst to engage the public. A Community Consultation Team travelled the length and breadth of the land, talking with Australians in town hall meetings, listening to their views, and encouraging written submissions. The Department found the overall public response to the White Paper gratifying. More than 2000 people attended the public meetings, nearly 1200 submissions were received (well over 80% of those being from Australians in their private capacity); over 100,000 web site visits were recorded; they fielded over 3500 phone calls and sent out nearly 20,000 copies of the discussion paper.
When I was Secretary of the Health Department, we also invested heavily in communications and market research. The most obvious investments were on public health campaigns on such issues as smoking, immunisation and AIDS. But we were also becoming more sophisticated in the use of communications to help in the design and implementation of new policies.
One example concerned private health insurance, and the development and implementation of policies to address a spiralling problem of falling participation by young healthy people, leading to increased costs for insurers, requiring increased premiums, and so leading to even more young and healthy people dropping out. The issue had been usefully put into the public arena through an expert Inquiry Report, but without a detailed proposal for reform. The Health Department subsequently arranged for detailed consultations with the industry. We also consulted the medical profession and the hospitals industry. As we developed options for a premium system that better reflected risks, but still protected people when they become old and vulnerable, we not only drew on expert actuarial advice, but we tested the concepts with stakeholders. We also used focus groups to better understand public fears about changing the health system, and how we should present reforms in a way that minimised those fears. One result was the very name of the reform measure itself : "Lifetime Cover".
On gaining Government approval for the reform, we undertook detailed market research to develop a highly sophisticated communications plan. The reform entailed setting a deadline by which everybody in Australia who wanted to take up private health insurance with the existing premiums must do so, after which the new system would come in place with higher premiums for people joining up when they are older. You can imagine this was a complex issue affecting millions of Australians. Our communications strategy involved not only mass media but information through people trusted by the public such as their local GP and pharmacist. The final result was a reform that was widely welcomed by the industry, expert commentators and the public. Private health insurance coverage, which had been steadily falling to well below 30%, jumped to well over 40%, where it has remained.
Similar sophisticated approaches to communications, including two-way communications, are being used across many agencies, and at both the Commonwealth and State levels.
Yet the unease I mentioned earlier has not disappeared, and for good reason. There is a tension between the public service values of apolitical professionalism and responsiveness to the elected government, and communications frequently lies at the centre of this tension. There is a fine line between explaining government policy and selling it, and between using marketing to achieve program objectives and implement policy initiatives, and becoming partisan. Let me return to this and other challenges later.
Interconnectedness : Across Governments and with Communities
Some academic commentators have described the international reform movement of the 1980's and 1990's as a move from 'process government' to 'market government'. More recently, the changes have been described as a move to 'connected government', fuelled by communications technology and increasing community expectations.
Australia has always had a fairly sound policy coordination capability and, since 1992, this has been enhanced by the work of the Council of Australian Governments. Through the participation of the Prime Minister and State Premiers this Council now addresses a wide range of Commonwealth-state issues from a national perspective. More specific whole-of-government experience for us recently has also been encouraging, chiefly the management of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney-involving many agencies at federal, state and local government levels-and the tremendous cross-government and cross-agency efforts put in during 2002 and 2003 to quell the bush fires in eastern Australia. Another notable recent example is agreement on an ambitious project to restore water quality to a number of our major rivers and to combat drought.
While the main focus of these exercises has been coordination across governments, each has also involved substantial community engagement. Indeed, the common factor is interconnectedness, not just whole-of-government coordination.
The challenge for us now is to develop mechanisms, structures and cultures, which facilitate whole-of-government, and wider, approaches that become a characteristic of the way our democratic governments work-not only in times of crisis. Last year our Prime Minister set out an active whole-of-government agenda entitled Strategic Leadership for Australia: Policy Directions in a Complex World. It ranged from science and innovation, and sustainable environment, to demographics, and work and family life. Each agenda item entailed engagement with non-government stakeholders.
I would like to sketch out for you some ways in which a more interconnected approach has identified new solutions to long-standing problems experienced by one group of Australians: our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. Indigenous Australians suffer a number of disadvantages in comparison with the rest of the population, chiefly, lower average income levels, higher unemployment rates, shorter life expectancies, lower levels of educational achievement, and higher mortality rates. New partnerships are being formed between indigenous community organisations and government agencies to address the difficulties facing indigenous Australians. Such collaboration is based on stronger indigenous self-reliance and better agency consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
A few years ago the national Health Department established framework agreements with State Departments, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the National Community Controlled Health Organisation to cooperate in planning, funding and delivering health services to Indigenous people. Coordinated care trials were established in certain remote communities involving the pooling of State and Commonwealth health funds and a system of community controlled management subject to open accountability for service levels and results. While aspects of the management capacity of the communities remain a concern, there is evidence of considerable improvement in the quality of care and people's access to appropriate care.
More recently the Government has embarked on a more ambitious trial program involving collaboration across a range of Commonwealth and State agencies in selected Indigenous communities. Community capacity building is again a critical element of the trials to ensure a workable bottom-up approach. The trials also involve private sector participants, as the focus is on building self sufficiency through employment and education, as well as on addressing underlying health and social problems such as substance abuse and violence. Each trial is being assisted directly by the head of an Australian Government Department.
It is too early to assess success, but there is a great deal of enthusiasm and cooperation.
In the light of this experience, and the evidence of increasing interest in connected solutions to major policy priorities, the Management Advisory Committee (comprising the heads of all the major Australian Public Service agencies) established a project earlier this year to advise on practical ways in which we might improve the way we address "whole -of-government" priorities. The project will focus on:
- making connections while maintaining the gains we have achieved from devolution and business driven management;
- engaging stakeholders while maintaining accountability to the Government and the Parliament; and
- building shared infrastructure and a public service culture that can support improved connectivity and more responsive services.
The project is well advanced, and I expect its report to be released early in 2004. Drawing on ten detailed case studies as well as broader experience in Australia as well as overseas, it is focusing on six areas where practical advice and/or some investment might improve our performance.
Management Advisory Committee, Whole-of-Government Project Areas
- Engaging with stakeholders
- Managing crises
- Changing the culture and capability of the Australian Public Service
- Ensuring that appropriate structures and processes are used
- Developing a capacity to share information technology and infrastructure
- Flexible ways of using the budget outcomes/outputs framework for cross portfolio initiatives.
Conclusion
This is necessarily just a brief overview of some of the things we have been doing to respond to changing citizen expectations, with a couple of examples to give you the flavour.
We have also learned from our experience.
While some gains in performance and in meeting customer needs and community expectations have come through the bigger structural reforms, many more have come from sustained management effort within both new and existing structures. In particular, strengthening the alignment between the outcomes and output targets set by Government, and the internal performance management regimes and Service Charters with their systematic feedback loops, is essential. As we improve each element of these integrated management arrangements, this contributes to improvements in the other elements, and substantial gains evolve over time through a "virtuous circle".
We have learned to be more sophisticated in our communications, and to build two-way processes to improve policy development, program management and service delivery. But the pressure of modern communications and the power of the media present a number of challenges. I mentioned one earlier : the fine line between the communication responsibilities of an apolitical public service and the political interests of the elected Government. Another is the inexorable pressure from the media for short term solutions to problems requiring careful analysis and measures which entail some political pain.
Vic Carroll, a former editor of one of our leading newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald, made a distinctly Australian point about this. He suggested that the Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey's reference to our 'tyranny of distance'-that is physical distance-has been replaced by another tyranny-the elimination of the time interval in communication, with urgent messages and events appearing to demand instantaneous responses. In an atmosphere of ringing telephones, chattering faxes, the squawking Internet, and government by talk back radio and 30 second sound grabs on the steps of Parliament House, he argued:
'The communications revolution has turned the focus of government to crisis management rather than to the development of careful long-term strategies based on the mass of information the new communications can deliver'. [Overhead 14]
There is similarly the danger of unrealistic expectations fed by new technology and the media. Like everyone else, I assume, we are struggling to explain the limits to Government spending, the limits of Government solutions to perceived social problems, and the need to prioritise. Firmly stating what can reasonably be expected - such as achievable timelines to respond to Ministerial correspondence, or the price Government is willing to pay for the marginal health gains from new drugs - is one approach we are pursuing, but with mixed success.
As we now explore how to manage "connected government" better, we are also looking to ensure we preserve the gains made from our earlier emphasis on vertical management. Those gains come from focusing more on results, allowing more flexibility through devolution, and including bottom-up responsiveness as well as top down accountability. We sense that a key to success from increased connectivity is to continue to emphasise results and to promote flexibility, and to place even greater emphasis on bottom-up responsiveness, which is where much of the pressure for connectivity is coming from. The danger comes from trying to connect everything to everything all the time, at great cost and with much red tape.
Finally, I should emphasise the importance of our public service values. Professor Dror [Overhead 15] highlighted this last year, when he advised CAPAM members that to ensure confident government we firstly need deeply embedded democratic values. Apart from democratic elections and a robust Parliamentary process, this entails a professional and impartial public service, responsive to the elected government, openly accountable, and efficient and effective. A deep understanding of these values is essential to managing the inevitable dilemmas involved in responding to community and citizen expectations.
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