This issue

– boundary spanning
– co-designing for impact
– high performing leadership 
– reassessing contracting out
– mental health prevention
Plus what I'm reading.

Research brief: Becoming a boundary spanning public servant  ​

Cross-boundary collaborations are a key feature of today’s public sector. A chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant discusses the skills, capabilities and experiences a public servant needs to develop to become an effective boundary spanner. Read our brief on the chapter. 

Co-designing for impact  ​

Aotearoa-New Zealand’s Centre for Social Impact has launched a report on co-designing for impact. It focuses on the role of ‘sprints’ in co-design using the case study of developing a National Strategy for Community Governance.  

The report outlines the experience of using sprints as well as reflections on what worked well and what could have been done differently. It also provides a range of supporting tools and resources. 

What are sprints? 

Sprints have evolved from software and technology development. They bring together multidisciplinary teams for a concentrated block of time to design and prototype products.

In co-design, sprint processes:  

• bring people with diverse backgrounds together for a short time 
• assume the problem is complex and not well-defined 
• are structured, well-tested processes that have been proven to get results for complex social problems 
• involve brainstorming, prototyping and testing. 

Tools and resources 

The publication provides links to a range of project resources including templates for: 

• a challenge statement 
• persona maps 
• a prototype statement 
• an implementation plan. 

Leadership for a high performing civil service ​

A new working paper from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) looks at the role of senior public servants - those who lead public servants in the pursuit of governmental objectives. It presents nine case studies on emerging leadership challenges in government, drawn from Australia, Canada, Estonia, France, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Korea and the Netherlands. 

The case studies explore two themes: 

1. Leadership capabilities (i.e. skills, competencies, behaviours, styles) that are necessary to respond to complex policy challenges. 
2. The policies, processes and tools needed to develop these capabilities and support senior public servants.  

Leadership capabilities 

The nine case studies identified common leadership capabilities in the following areas: 

1. Values-based leadership: Individuals are required to negotiate multiple and often competing values that guide their decision-making towards the public interest. 

2. Open inclusion: Successful leaders challenge their own perceptions by searching for voices and perspectives beyond those they normally hear from. 

3. Organisational stewardship: Leaders reinforce a trust and values-based culture and equip their workforce with the right skills, tools and working environments. 

4. Networked collaboration: Looking beyond their own organisation, successful leaders are adept at collaborating through networks, with other government actors, and beyond. 

New -- and old -- questions  

The report raised several issues about leadership and the senior public service including: 

• Sharing objectives and accountability – how to align systems for better collaboration within and across sectors? 
• Managing the political administrative interface – how can the independence of the senior public service be balanced with the need for political responsiveness and public accountability?  
• Private sector leadership – how to get the balance right between external and internal recruitment into the senior civil service? 

A Melbourne School of Government policy brief reassesses contracting out in light of Victoria’s hotel quarantine inquiry.

Contracting out: the basics 

At the heart of contracting out is the assumption that government functions can be translated into specified ‘services’ or ‘tasks’. These form the subject of contractual arrangements between government agencies and private sector providers. 

The service/task must be specified with sufficient certainty to provide clarity about what precisely is to be delivered. This also enables assessment of liability in the event of contractual breach. 

Gaps in the design of the hotel quarantine program 

Quarantine is a form of civil imprisonment in service of a public health measure. A key revelation from the hotel quarantine inquiry is that private security contractors were not ‘running’ the hotel quarantine program at all. Rather, they had been contracted to perform an ‘observe and report’ security service. 

To have possessed all relevant powers to enforce quarantine, the private security guards would have needed explicit legal authorisation to that effect. Contracting out the quarantine frontline involved layers of contracting, subcontracting and sub-subcontracting. This amplified the complexity of ensuring a large and diffusely organised workforce had received adequate infection control training. 

Paying attention to the form 

The fundamental demand of a contract is that the contractual task be stated with sufficient certainty. A contract is not an agile legal form, and nor is it meant to be. While it is possible to contract for ‘security services’, it is not possible to contract for ‘public safety’. This is too broad as contracting-out is inherently ill-suited to functions that encompass a range of interconnected responsibilities. 

What this meant 

Those who stood at the frontline of Victoria’s hotel quarantine program needed to have two high-stakes government functions in hand, simultaneously. They needed: 

• to oversee and, where necessary, to enforce a regime of detention 
• to do so with a view to containing an infectious disease.  

They did not, or could not, deliver adequately on either demand. There are also larger questions about the appropriateness of privatisation and the fit between contracted out service delivery and government functions. 

Primary prevention in mental health  ​

VicHealth commissioned an evidence review on the primary prevention of mental health conditions. The review looked the at strongest and most up-to-date peer-reviewed evidence and grey literature in response to two questions:  

• Can mental health conditions be prevented?  
• Can this be achieved through primary prevention activity?  

The answer to both questions was yes.  

What is prevention? 

Most mental health conditions evolve through a series of stages from ‘wellness’ to sub-threshold symptoms, and onto a diagnosable disorder.  

Prevention efforts can target any of these stages to avert progression to the next: 

• Primary prevention occurs before the onset of a condition to prevent it from developing. 
• Secondary prevention targets the early stages of a condition to reduce its duration or severity. 
• Tertiary prevention focuses on lessening a condition’s impact on quality of life and longevity. 

Effective primary prevention interventions 

Primary prevention focuses on preventing the onset of mental health conditions by reducing people’s exposure to risk factors and/or increasing their exposure to protective factors for these conditions.  

Risk factors are biological, psychological and social variables that increase a person’s likelihood of experiencing a condition. By contrast, protective factors lower the likelihood. The research evidence shows there is a range of effective primary prevention initiatives that influence these factors and reduce the occurrence of several conditions.  

These include: 

• parenting programs 
• personal skills-building programs delivered through schools, universities and workplaces  
• community-level programs that enhance social cohesion 
• creating mentally healthy public policy that reduces people’s experience of child neglect and abuse, intimate partner violence and racism.  

1. Ten things to know about gender equality 

A McKinsey article outlines ten things everyone should know about gender equality. These include 

• tackling the global gender gap will boost global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) 

• progress toward gender equality has been marginal since 2015; large gaps remain 

• the challenge for women is now even greater as they experience economic fallout from COVID-19 

• companies that are gender and ethnically diverse outperform their peers. 

2. Navigating organisational disruption and complexity 

An article from UX Collective discusses how to steer a way through complexity and ambiguity - whether it’s establishing new services, integrating multiple organisations into one, or navigating the next pandemic. At the outset, there is not one “right” path. Given that complex situations are defined as dynamic, emergent and unpredictable, these are situations that can’t be plotted. 

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis