This issue

– policy sciences and COVID-19  
– changing behaviour during COVID-19 
– using mass surveillance to fight coronavirus 
– what makes a leading democracy 
– decarbonisation futures 
Plus what I'm reading.

Research brief: What can the policy sciences tell us about COVID-19?​

A paper in Policy Sciences explores the ways in which scientific and technical expertise, emotions and narratives have influenced COVID-19 policy decisions. Read our brief on the paper.

ANZSOG’s Leading in A Crisis series continues to produce new material on the public management issues raised by COVID-19. The most recent papers cover the role of adaptive leadership in shaping the longer term response, and the importance of good public communication from leaders.

Changing behaviour during COVID-19

Government use of behavioural insights in public policy has become widespread in recent years. A new paper in the Journal of Behavioural Public Administration has looked  at the evidence from behavioural science and how it could inform the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.

Five behavioural areas were reviewed:

• handwashing
• face touching
• self-isolation
• public-spirited behaviour
• responses to crisis communication.

The first three areas are the basis of public health messaging in multiple countries regarding individual behaviour. The second two are key behavioural drivers of adhering to public health guidance during an epidemic.

What the review found

1. There are effective behavioural interventions to increase handwashing but not to reduce face touching.

2. The evidence for negative mental health effects of isolation is strong. Social supports and behavioural plans can reduce the negative psychological effects of isolation, potentially reducing the disincentive to isolate.

3. Public-spirited behaviour is more likely with frequent communication of what is “best for all” and social disapproval of noncompliance.

4. Effective crisis communication involves speed, honesty, credibility, empathy and promoting useful individual actions. Campaigns are likely to be more effective when designed to be distinctive, consistent and engaging.

Times of great change can be the best times to make … change

Life as we know it is suspended and everyone is finding new ways of being in the world. Adding more change to daily life might seem counterintuitive. In this article, Monash University behavioural scientists say times of great upheaval can be the best times to embed new habits.

The prospect of mass surveillance as a policy response to COVID-19 raises concerns about privacy and civil liberties. An article in MIT Technology Review argues mass surveillance, with safeguards, is needed to fight COVID-19.  According to Professor Genevieve Bell from the ANU’s 3A Institute, this is a chance to reinvent the way we collect and share personal data while protecting individual privacy.

The rigorous use of contact tracing in digital and physical realms has been credited with helping limit the spread of COVID-19 in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. But using digital contact tracing such as mobile-phone apps has raised concerns about:

• surveillance and privacy
• the trade-offs between health, community well-being and individual rights.

The article differentiates between three contact tracing purposes:

1. Public health: This is about making the best use of finite health resources. Contact tracing could help contain an outbreak before it gets too big.

2. Patients: Contact tracing resembles a patient journey. The focus could be helping someone decide whether and how to seek care.

3. Citizens: This could be a way of identifying hot spots without identifying individuals—a repository of anonymised traces and patterns. The data could help government agencies create community-level strategies.

It’s not forever

The speed of the virus and the response doesn’t mean solutions last forever. There’s a strong argument that what is built for the pandemic should have a sunset clause—especially when it comes to the private and community data collected.

What makes a leading democracy?

A new report from Democracy 2025 investigated Australian attitudes towards trust and democratic practices and how they compared with other countries. The report used the latest data from the World Values Survey.

What the report means by ‘trust’

The report understands trust in a political sense as a relational concept:

• Holding a positive perception about the actions of an individual or an organisation that requires keeping promises and agreements.

The report identifies two types of trust:

1. Political trust: governments need the trust of their citizens to tackle challenging issues and problems confronting society.

2. Social trust: trust between people is seen in a similar way as the glue that makes human societies function effectively.

What the report found

• Trust in government is low in Australia compared to other liberal democracies including the USA, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.
• Social trust is also comparatively low compared to other liberal democracies.
• Australians do not perceive their political system to be as prone to corruption as citizens of other countries.
• Australians lack of trust in politicians contrasts with their degree of trust in science.

Decarbonisation futures

This report from Climateworks provides a guide for Australian governments and decision-makers on priority technologies, deployment pathways and benchmarks for achieving net zero emissions.

The report argues Australia can immediately accelerate deployment of mature and demonstration zero-emissions solutions, like renewable energy and electric vehicles,in sectors such as electricity, transport and buildings.

The analysis shows how Australia can reduce emissions in line with the Paris climate goals by:

• immediately accelerating the deployment of mature and demonstrated zero-emissions or best available technologies
• rapidly developing and commercialising emerging zero-emissions technologies in harder-to-abate sectors.

This report also outlines progress made in the past five years towards zero emissions technologies across major sectors of the economy: electricity, buildings, transport, industry, agriculture and land.

1. Why curiosity matters

A package of three articles in Harvard Business Review profiles curiosity and why it matters. New research shows curiosity is vital to an organisation’s performance. The impulse to seek new information and explore novel possibilities is a basic human attribute. When our curiosity is triggered, we think more deeply about decisions and come up with more creative solutions. Curiosity can also facilitate more trusting and collaborative relationships with colleagues.

2. Sheltering in place with Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was a 16th century French statesman and author. While he was mayor of Bordeaux, a third of the population perished because of the plague pandemic. An article in Paris Review discusses Montaigne’s essay, “Of Experience” - how to live when life itself comes under attack. Pleasure, Montaigne contends, flows not from free rein but structure. The brevity of existence, he says, gives it a certain heft. In sheltering from COVID-19, Montaigne’s musings can be seen as a blueprint for life in the red zone.

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis