This issue

- workplace gender equality
- the bright side of public service
- big picture Indigenous policy
- how robots will change public policy
- homelessness in Australia
Plus what I'm reading.

Workplace gender equality: Where to next?

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed gendered labour market inequalities in Australia and around the world. An article in the Journal of Industrial Relations: 

• examines the impact of the pandemic on women in the workplace.
• identifies five areas where action is urgently required to create a more equitable post-pandemic recovery.

Read our brief on the article

The bright side of public service

“Always look on the bright side of life", sang Eric Idle in the Monty Python film, Life of Brian. This same optimism permeates in an article co- authored by 15 academics including ANZSOG’s Professor Janine O’Flynn. It is a counterpoint to a narrative which focuses on government disasters and how governments fail our expectations.

Positive public administration

Positive public administration needs to make sense of the positivity that can be found in the practice of public administration.

It needs to understand how public administrators articulate what they value in the institutions, outputs and outcomes of public governance. It also requires dedication to learn how to learn from what works in public policy.

Positive outcomes can consist of desirable things happening and undesirable things not happening.

It means observing fluctuations in the frequency of negative events and positive events equally. It also means avoiding focusing only on measures for which data is readily available and not walking away from debates about how to assess value.

For any positive outcome to remain meaningful, successful governance needs to be robust over time. Private sector studies show that much-heralded companies may go from good to great, to gone.

Time-series data needs to be constructed through multiple observations of public organisations and policies, gathering assessments across time.

Finally, positive public administration needs to be ambitious but humble. Success, like failure, is always the product of a combination of agency and structure/context.

It is imperative to explore the role of institutional complexity, organisational learning, adaptive adjustment, bottom-up processes, feedback loops and structured serendipity.

Big picture Indigenous policy essays

This paper from the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research comprises three big picture essays reflecting on Australian Indigenous policy.

The first essay grapples with ideas of structure in Indigenous policy, what endures and what changes. Five deep structures are discussed:

• federal decentralisation of policy
• the changing balancing of the competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship
• high moralism
• a remote focus
• the individual–communal dimension.

The hope expressed in this essay is that through knowing deep structures well, we might be able to change them while also recognising their persistent power.

The second essay grapples with what a decolonising approach to Australian Indigenous policy might look like and how it could be brought about.

The essay argues decolonising Australian Indigenous policy requires more use of the peoples’ idiom and recognising collective Indigenous rights.

Recent public policy debates have operated more in the ‘populations’ idiom, with its focus on individual and household disadvantage.

The third essay extends discussion of the deep structures from the first essay. It also connects the decolonising of Indigenous policy to the idea of deeply informed agency

An OECD policy paper addresses:

• the current and emerging uses and impacts of robots across the economy
• the mid-term future of robotics
• the role of policy.

Robots are used in every part of the economy, from manufacturing to education.They come in many shapes and sizes and perform a growing number of roles such as harvesting crops, accelerating laboratory research and cleaning up environmental waste.

As science and engineering progress, robots will also become more central to crisis response: from helping combat infectious diseases to performing search and rescue.

They will be operating essential services such as waste treatment and maintaining critical infrastructure such as power systems.

Claims that robots will cause widespread job losses have not been borne out to date, but robots are essential to raising sluggish growth in labour productivity across advanced economies and the potential of robotics is only beginning to be achieved.

Governments possess the policy tools to support and orient the development of socially valuable robots and increase their uptake.

Homelessness in Australia

A federal parliamentary inquiry into homelessness in Australia has released its final report.

It examines issues relating to the definition of homelessness and the prevalence of homelessness in Australia. It also outlines the roles and responsibilities of the three levels of government.

Risk factors

The inquiry found there is no single cause of homelessness. Instead, there are a diverse range of causes and risk factors which impact people in different ways.

There also social and individual circumstances that make some groups of Australians particularly vulnerable to the risk of homelessness.

Individual risk factors include:

•  Gender and age: men, older people (over 45) and young people (15-24) were listed as demographic groups at elevated risk.
• Cultural risk factors: Indigenous peoples and those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds were included as two cohorts at increased risk of homelessness.

• Human capital risk factors: unemployment and not being in the labour force, casual and fixed-term contract employment and low educational attainment were all human capital risk factors.
• Relationship risk factors: family and domestic violence was identified as a significant risk factor and the main reason women presented for assistance at homelessness agencies.
• Health related risk factors such as mental ill-health, disability, traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury and problematic drug and/or alcohol use.

​Proposed solutions

The report outlines four proposed solutions to better address homelessness in Australia:

1. An increased focus on prevention and early intervention.
2. Adoption of a ‘housing first’ approach.
3. Enhanced provision of social housing.
4. Development of a national strategy for housing and/or homelessness.

1. Seven skills you need if you want to solve public problems

Public problem solvers possess a replicable skill set that can be applied to any public problem. An article in Fast Company by Professor Beth Noveck, director of the US-based The Governance Lab, outlines seven problem-solving skills which include data-analytical thinking, rapid evidence review and measuring what works. Public problem solvers who deploy these skills are not reckless. Despite their willingness to innovate, they hold fast to the values of the public interest. They are ethically conscious of obligations to due process and equity.

2. Why Satan should chair your meetings

Despite their centrality to modern life, few of us have a good word to say about meetings. Surveys suggest we consider at least half the ones we attend to be ineffective. This Economist article is a literature lover’s guide to meetings. It examines office meetings through the lens of Homer’s Iliad, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Milton’s Paradise Lost where Satan demonstrated how adept he/she was at chairing meetings.

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis