This issue:

- overlooking frontline workers’ contribution to innovation  
- reviewing joined up social services 
- economic and political outlook 2022 
- ending homelessness 
- culture as a public good 

Plus what I’m reading. 

Overlooking frontline workers’ contribution to innovation

The role of frontline workers in collaborative innovation in public services is underexplored. A paper in Public Administration discusses a case study of collaboration in social services. It found the strength of the innovative solution was diluted by the omission of frontline workers in key phases of the innovation process. 

Read our brief on the article

A report from the NZ Productivity Commission reviews the evidence around collaborative initiatives intended to reduce persistent disadvantage in Aotearoa New Zealand. It uses Amartya Sen’s capability approach to assess whether these initiatives have been successful. 

Sen’s capability approach 
To Sen, wellbeing is the freedom to live the life one values and has reason to value. The capability approach focuses on the real choices people have and their ability to convert resources into a life that is good for them. 

One of Sen’s insights is that more resources are not always enough to improve wellbeing. How people use the resources available to them also matters. Initiatives are likely to be more effective at improving wellbeing when they: 
- increase the level of resources people can access 
- enable those resources to be converted into a life they value. 

What works? 
Effective collaborations require adequate, dedicated funding from the outset. They also need: 
- trust between providers, and between providers and recipients of support 
- clear objectives that are shared by providers and recipients 
- sound governance and enough staff
- effective data collection, monitoring and evaluation. 

What doesn’t work? 
Collaborative initiatives often face barriers with the way government operates:
- Government doesn’t understand or have the capabilities to support collaborative action. It’s reluctant to genuinely decentralise funding and decision making to communities.
- Government funding is insufficient. It’s uncertain, short term, and often requires complex accountabilities. This results in service gaps and significant unmet need. 
- Providers can feed back systems-level problems to government, but the feedback isn’t being addressed. Instead, providers often bend the rules or find a work around. 

Governments must make tough policy decisions in 2022 to address cost pressures and drive economic momentum, according to CEDA’s Economic and Political Outlook 2022. 

Policy outlook 
COVID-19 will continue to be front of mind for policymakers in 2022. Free movement of people and goods across borders is still impeded, driving acute workforce shortages and exhausting Australia’s health system. Many workforce shortages were inevitable as borders were shut and more Australians contracted COVID-19. The pandemic has also exposed poor coordination and underinvestment in Australia’s education and skills pipeline, including in critical care sectors. 

The long-term challenges of an ageing population and climate change are approaching an inflection point, where more deliberate and urgent policy action is required. In the absence of strong productivity growth, Australians’ living standards have grown less strongly than in the past. 

A significant proportion of Australians remain shut off from economic opportunities, including those in entrenched disadvantage and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, while gender gaps across many metrics remain unacceptably wide. 

Economic outlook 
Economic policy will be a key theme for the year. Fiscal spending will remain elevated in 2022 regardless of who wins the federal election. This will support consumer demand but eventually the budget will need repair. In the medium term, there will likely be a focus on productivity growth and business investment, as well as population growth.

Far from creating a collapse in property values, COVID-19 helped fuel a property boom, and regional Australia has led the charge. Capital city dwelling values rose by 21 per cent in 2021 with regional values rising on average by more than 25 per cent. 

The nascent trend away from capital city CBDs and high density, high-rise property is evident not only through house prices but also in population trends. For the first time in more than a century, Australia’s population contracted in the third quarter of 2020 due to closed international borders. ABS data showed a record net 11,800 people left the nation’s capital cities in the March quarter of 2021.  

This report from the Centre for Social Impact presents evidence from the largest community-based database on rough sleeping and homelessness in Australia. It puts forward a five-step national plan to end homelessness. 

At a glance 
- The number of people experiencing homelessness is consistently growing nationally with an estimated national homelessness rate of 50 persons for every 10,000 people.
- Most of the growth in homelessness reflects an increase in the number of people living in severely overcrowded dwellings, who represent 44 per cent of the estimated total homelessness population.
- The number of people identified as sleeping rough has increased by 20 per cent since 2011.
- People on the database had experienced homelessness for 3.8 years with around 40 per cent of respondents reporting many years of homelessness. 

What needs to be done 
The report identifies five key actions to end homelessness in Australia: 
- Leadership and proactivity at the Australian Government level and a national end homelessness strategy applying across the states and territories. 
- An increase in the supply of social and affordable housing directed to an end homelessness goal.
- Comprehensive application of Housing First programs linked to supportive housing for those entering permanent housing with histories of homelessness.
- Targeted prevention and early intervention programs to address the underlying drivers. 
- Supportive systems and programs which build the enablers of an end homelessness program. 

This UNESCO report provides a global overview of the state of the cultural and creative sectors. 

Culture and creativity account for 3.1 per cent of global GDP and 6.2 per cent of all employment. Exports of cultural goods and services doubled in value from 2005 to reach US$389.1 billion in 2019. It is one of the youngest and fastest growing economic sectors in the world. However new and ongoing challenges also make the creative economy one of the most vulnerable sectors that is often overlooked by public and private investment. 

The pandemic has proven the intrinsic value of the cultural and creative sector at generating social cohesion, educational resource and personal well-being in times of crisis. It has also undermined the sector’s potential to generate economic growth, which is too often underestimated. 

The report estimates that 10 million jobs were lost in the creative industries in 2020 alone because of the pandemic. It has also calculated that the global Gross Value Added in the cultural and creative industries contracted by US$750 billion in 2020. In countries for which data is available, the revenue of the cultural and creative industries decreased by between 20 per cent and 40 per cent. 
 

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis

Maria curates The Bridge. She is a Public Policy Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a former senior Victorian public servant with 20 years’ experience. She has a deep understanding of public policy and public management and brings a practitioner’s perspective to the academic.