This issue

– public sector innovation intensity
– behaviour change scale up toolkit
– Australia's productivity experience
– evidence based policy (or not)
– family matters
Plus what I'm reading.

Research brief: Public sector innovation intensity ​

A paper in Public Administration examines how the push of technology and the pull of demand drives innovation in public sector organisations. It argues these drivers are enabled by organisational capabilities. Read our brief on the paper. 

Behaviour change scale up toolkit  ​

BehaviourWorks has developed a toolkit with resources and guidance on how to scale up behaviour change interventions. Its development was informed by a review of published evidence and interviews with more than 20 practitioners. 

What is scale up? 

Scale up is a deliberate effort to increase the impact of innovations successfully tested in pilot or experimental projects to benefit more people. Scale up is often challenging because interventions that work in one context may not work in another. 

What are the stages of scale up? 

While there are many approaches to behaviour change, most move through several steps:  

• understanding the context and identifying behaviours to change 
• designing an intervention or solution 
• testing and implementing that intervention. 

Scale up also includes several stages: 

• planning: iteratively creating, communicating, and evaluating ideas. 
• piloting: iteratively collecting external data to test and evaluate ideas before allocating resources to implement them. 
• implementing: releasing the ideas at scale and evaluating and monitoring their fidelity and impact. 

Tools and resources 

The toolkit includes four tools for use at the planning stage:  

• behavioural prioritisation frameworks for picking the right behaviour 
• feasibility testing frameworks to help pick feasible interventions 
• prioritisation frameworks for picking the optimal type of intervention 
• template plan to design the optimal intervention. 

There is also a tool to test assumptions and de-risk interventions at the pilot stage. Other resources include editable templates and papers from the scale up evidence review. 

Help improve the toolkit 

This is the first draft of the toolkit with new iterations to come. BehaviourWorks is seeking feedback on the current draft.  

Australia’s productivity experience ​

The Productivity Commission has released its third productivity insights paper for the year. Australia is now experiencing its most severe economic contraction since the Great Depression because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has given rise to economic uncertainty and a complex policy landscape.  

At a glance 

1. Australia’s future prosperity will be affected by the severity and length of the downturn and also by the growth rate of productivity once the economy has recovered. The policy challenge is to support a strong and rapid recovery, consistent with policy settings that can also drive faster productivity growth in the medium and long term.  

2. Australia has weathered severe recessions in the past and recovery has usually been swift. However, labour markets are often weak long after the recession has ended. In some cases, unemployment has remained high for more than a decade after the initial downturn. 

3. Being a high productivity economy in the 21st century requires having a highly productive services sector. But the path to productivity growth in services may look different to goods sectors like manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. 

4. Innovation in some services industries could involve less emphasis on traditional research and development and greater reliance on new business models as a vehicle for experimentation.  

5. The quality and adaptability of regulation will be a key factor. Human capital (including the health and skills of the workforce) could become increasingly important to these labour-intensive industries.  

6. As in the past, policy will be a key determinant of success and the general lessons of Australia’s productivity experience remain robust: fostering innovation and diffusion of knowledge, openness to the world, flexibility in resource allocation and avoiding policies that promote particular industries, firms, technologies or input. 

A new Democracy study found that Australian federal and state governments are only loosely following basic standards of evidence and consultation-based policy making. The study involved two philosophically opposed think tanks - Per Capita and the Institute for Public Affairs - analysing the same 20 federal and state government policies. Eight of the case studies involved how well governments made decisions in response to a national emergency. 

Each think tank separately benchmarked the policies against the ten criteria of the Wiltshire test for public policy. The Wiltshire criteria focus on good process, not results, because the net fiscal, social, economic and environmental impact of a policy may not be known for some time. Both think tanks identified state and federal governments are failing to apply best practice in developing public policy. 

The research found that most scope for improvement in policy-making was: 

• comparing the costs and benefits of alternative policy options 
• explaining how a policy decision would be rolled out 
• issuing a Green Paper to invite public feedback before announcing a policy decision in a White paper. 

What are the Wiltshire criteria? 

The criteria are outlined in detail in this paper. In summary:  

• establish need 
• set objectives 
• identify options  
• consider mechanisms 
• brainstorm alternatives 
• design pathway 
• consult further 
• publish proposals 
• introduce legislation 
• communicate decision 

Read IPA’s report here. 

Read Per Capita’s report here. 

Family Matters 2020

Family Matters – Strong communities. Strong culture. Stronger children. is Australia’s national campaign to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people grow up safe and cared for in family, community and culture. The Family Matters Report 2020  reveals that children continue to be removed from family and kin at disproportionate rates – disrupting their connection to community and culture.  

At a glance 

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 37% of the total out-of-home care population but they represent only 6% of the total population of children in Australia. 
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 9.7 times more likely to be removed from their families than non-Indigenous children – an overrepresentation that has increased consistently over the last 10 years. 

• It is projected that the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in care will more than double by 2029 if there is no action taken. 
• Around 81% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care are living permanently away from their birth parents until the age of 18. 
• In 2018-19, there were 19 adoptions. Of these, 95% of adoptions have been to non-Indigenous carers, and all occurred in New South Wales and Victoria. 

Family Matters is led by SNAICC – National Voice for our Children and governed by an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Leadership Group, ensuring the campaign has the authenticity and the range of skills required to effect change.  

Regulating unreason ​

The final free webinar of 2020 for ANZSOG’s National Regulators Community of Practice – Regulating unreason - will examine the challenges of regulating in a time when conspiracy theories and quack cures have flourished both online and offline. 

The panel discussion will include Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner Luke Cornelius and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, and will cover what regulatory tools might help us deal with the challenges of unreason in these extraordinary times. The webinar will be held from 11am-12.30pm Tuesday 15 December. For registrations click here.

1. Guardians of Public Value ​

This open access book presents 12 case studies of how public organisations become, and remain, institutions. Institutions embody and safeguard values that are important to a society, guarding these values against overt attacks and the forces of erosion. These organisations did not just survive challenges and controversies. They have adapted in the face of crises, preserving their institutional character while meeting newly imposed demands. Case studies include Doctors Without Borders, the BBC, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the ACCC in Australia. 

2. Landmark mental health report urges reform. But we need more than Band-Aids  ​

An article in Croakey discusses the release of the Productivity Commission’s Mental Health Inquiry Report against the backdrop of the Federal Government’s $1.2 billion settlement of the Robodebt case. These announcements illustrate a tension between efforts to improve Australia’s mental health system and actions that undermine a mentally healthy society. On the one hand, the Productivity Commission’s report seeks to address key barriers to providing mental healthcare, and urges a firm commitment to systemic reform to provide “person-centred care”. On the other, the Robodebt controversy is an example of how governments’ actions, especially in non-health portfolios, can undermine the community’s mental health. 

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis