This issue

– pandemic leadership
– citizen participation
– behavioural economics
– commissioning public services
– COVID-19 and gender equality
– blog posts to bookmark
Plus what I'm reading.

Research brief: Pandemic leadership

A paper in Leadership analyses the leadership approach of the New Zealand government under Jacinda Ardern in responding to COVID-19. Based on this case study analysis, the paper develops a good practice framework for pandemic leadership. Read our brief on the paper.

Reimagining Government

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of governments in dealing with a society-wide crisis, but also provided us with an opportunity to rethink how they serve their citizens.

ANZSOG and the Centre for Public Impact are Reimagining Government in a series of six webinars, which brings 

together senior practitioners, academics and leading thinkers from across the globe. These thinkers will be guided by the ‘enablement paradigm’ a belief that the best role for government is not to manage or control but to create the conditions that lead to good outcomes for society.

Catching the deliberative wave

The OECD has released a report on innovative citizen participation. Public sector agencies from all levels of government are turning to citizens’ assemblies, juries, panels, and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems. 

The report has gathered close to 300 examples of representative deliberative practice to: 

• explore trends in participative processes 

• identify different models 

• analyse the trade-offs among different design choices  

• assess the benefits and limits of public deliberation. 

Why representativeness and deliberation? 

1. Better policy outcomes because deliberation results in considered public judgements rather than public opinions. 

2. Greater legitimacy to make hard choices. Processes help policy makers to better understand policy priorities, values and the reasons behind them. 

3. Enhances public trust in government and democratic institutions by giving citizens an effective role in public decision making.

4. Makes governance more inclusive by opening the door to a more diverse group of people. 

Good practice principles  

The OECD has drawn together a set of good practice principles based on the evidence and case studies in the report. These include: 

• clear purpose linked to a defined public problem 

• accountability and transparency 

• inclusiveness and involving under-represented groups 

• representativeness with participants being a microcosm of the general public 

• integrity with the process run at arm’s length from government. 

A guide to behavioural economics 

The Behavioural Economics Guide is an annual publication dedicated to behavioural economics and behavioural insights. The 2020 Guide features contributions from scholars and practitioners around the globe as well as a behavioural science encyclopaedia.

COVID-19 and climate change 

The guide’s editorial examines behavioural economics lessons from responses to coronavirus and climate change. While the two crises differ, they share similarities at an individual and at a policy-level decision-making perspective:  

• both hazards are characterised by deep uncertainty that encompasses physical, biological, and chemical processes; technological progress; and behavioural responses. 

• actions to reduce the risk of infection by COVID-19 and rein in the magnitude of climate change have upfront costs that need to be paid now but their benefits accrue to the individual and to the collective only in the future. 

• the costs and benefits of different ways of responding to both hazards are unequally distributed across geographies, levels of income, prosperity as well as age and future generations.  

• both crises call for cooperative action, even though their negative effects on health, wellbeing, and the economy elicit competitive responses. 

Sydney Policy Lab has released a report outlining fundamental principles for good commissioning. Good commissioning is a way of working that sees government agencies, service providers and other stakeholders working together. It requires a commitment to community involvement, flexibility, learning and relationships. 

What is commissioning? 

While there is no one fixed definition, commissioning is increasingly understood as a strategic, collaborative way of working that centres on relationships. It is highly context specific and encompasses all stages of the policy cycle. The report sees commissioning as a practice as opposed to a catchall for all public sector procurement. 

A commissioning jigsaw 

The report uses the tool of a commissioning jigsaw —six core questions that commissioners must engage with to shape a project. 

The questions are: 

1. What should commissioning address and where?  
2. What is the role of the community? 
3. Who does the commissioning – government, community or intermediary organisations? 
4. Who sets the outcomes? 
5. How is funding provided? 
6. Who is delivering the services? 

Four principles 

Based on research, the report has identified four key principles which underpin successful commissioning initiatives: 

• putting relationships first 

• letting communities lead 

• embedding learning 

• investing in people. 

When taken together, they form a lens through which government and the community sector should approach commissioning. 

Can COVID-19 lead to improved gender equality?

An article in The Lancet argues COVID-19 has delivered a shock to existing gender systems that could recalibrate gender roles with beneficial effects on population health. 

Globally, women do more unpaid work than men. Much of it is care work, with 75% done by women. It is estimated unpaid care work is equivalent to 9% of global GDP. The unequal distribution of unpaid care work serves as a barrier to female labour force participation and is one way that gender inequalities are reinforced. 

COVID-19 exacerbates this in two ways:  

• women’s caring for sick family members reduces their capacity to be in paid employment and places them at increased risk of infection. 

• confinement at home due to work at home requirements and school closures may compound the unequal division of domestic tasks. 

The gender norms and beliefs that shape gender systems are not immutable. Exit policies from the COVID-19 pandemic should redistribute a proportion of women's unpaid caring responsibilities to support female labour force participation. Government and organisational policies must increase the opportunities for women and men to combine paid employment and unpaid caring. Policies that only target women may reinforce gender inequalities.  

Blog post to bookmark

The Evidence & Policy blog makes insights from the Evidence & Policy academic journal accessible to a wider audience. In this post, the editors reflect on the interplay between evidence and policy: 

1. Evidence does not tell us what to do. It helps reduce uncertainty but does not tell us how to interpret problems or what to do about them. 

2. There is no such thing as ‘the evidence’. Instead, there are a large number of researchers with different backgrounds, making different assumptions, asking different questions, using different methods and addressing different problems.  

3. While it can be strategically useful to present decisions as ‘evidence-based’, policy is necessarily political. Policymaking is guided by values and beliefs alongside relevant evidence. 

4. The good governance of evidence requires transparency. Secrecy can fuel media criticism and public concern. Good governance requires a willingness to be open about uncertainty and to learn from mistakes. 

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis