This issue

– complexity in public services
– collaborating after a crisis
– designing public policy
– Australian homelessness in 2020
– the future of jobs
Plus what I'm reading.

Research brief: Responding to complexity in public services  ​

A paper in Public Money and Management discusses the emerging ‘Human Learning Systems’ approach to the funding, commissioning and management of public services. This  provides a helpful framework for public managers that can help them engage with, and embrace, the complexity of delivering services. Read our brief on the paper.

Collaborating after crisis  ​

The global pandemic poses many challenges for governments across the world and offers new opportunities for collaborating to address them. A new Melbourne School of Government policy brief from ANZSOG’s Professor Janine O’Flynn argues that practitioners and scholars can work better together to address these ‘big challenges’. 

The brief focuses on two challenges:  

• government capacity 
• inequality and entrenched disadvantage. 

Government capacity 

The COVID crisis has revealed gaps in government capacity across the world. Government capacity rests on the contributions of other parties. However this reliance always comes with risks as well as rewards.  

In crisis, overreliance on other parties can be catastrophic. It can illuminate the erosion of internal capacity or create new risks for government and citizens. This has been shown through the test-and-trace debacle in the United Kingdom, the hotel security deficiencies in Victoria and the international failures of aged care.  

Inequality and entrenched disadvantage 

The pandemic has acted as an accelerant of many entrenched issues across the world, including injustice, systemic inequality and disadvantage. Already the United Nations has warned  that 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy could  lose their livelihoods.  

We are also seeing strong links between poverty, race and COVID-19. In the US, Black and Latino Americans are contracting the virus and dying more than White Americans. Black and Asian groups in the UK have been more affected than White groups. In Australia, some groups are faring much worse, and this will sharpen as supports are withdrawn or scaled back. 

Collaborating to make a difference 

Practitioners and scholars can work together on the big challenges instead of dwelling on the divide caused by a perceived ‘research-practice gap’. Relationships need to be designed for impact underpinned by principles for effective collaborations. This means having the right mix of knowledge, skills and experience to drive the work forward.

Designing public policy ​

A new report from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council looks at the use of design to influence policy content (design in policy) as well as the role of design research to influence policy processes (design for policy).  

Government interest in design methods for policy-making has grown significantly, especially within policy labs. These are multidisciplinary government teams using a range of methods, including design, to involve citizens in service and policy development. In the 1990s, there were only two policy labs in Finland and Singapore. From the 2000s, there were 14 labs across the globe and this number grew to over 100 by 2020. 

Policy design skills 

The report also considered the growing demand in government for service and policy designers. Based on interviews with government and academics, the report outlines the following skills needed for policy design. 

1. Knowledge 

• design, data and digital 

• policy development and delivery 

• user research. 

2. Practical skills

• complex problem solving 
• capacity building in user-centred policy design 
• facilitating workshops and design sprints 
• leading multi-disciplinary teams 
• synthesising diverse perspectives of stakeholders and users 
• creating and testing prototypes in policy delivery environments. 

3. Mindset

• work iteratively 

• agile and flexible 

• lifecycle perspective (end-to-end development and delivery) 

• put users first. 

Launch Housing’s latest Australian Homelessness Monitor shows the national homelessness rate is set to surge as short-term COVID-19  and housing protections phase down. The Monitor is an in-depth analysis examining the changes in the scale and nature of homelessness in Australia.  

Key findings 

• Australia’s homelessness problem is growing. Around 290,000 Australians received help from specialist homelessness services in 2018-19, a 14% increase in the four years to 2018-19. 
• Australians aged over 65 have recently formed the fastest-growing age cohort within the homeless service user population, with an increase of 33% in four years. 
• In 2018–19, the single most frequently cited factor aggravating housing insecurity was family violence followed by mental ill-health. 

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people remain over-represented within Australia’s homeless population, with a rate of homelessness ten times the population-wide norm. 
• Expenditure on homelessness ‘emergency services’ rose by 27% in the four years to 2018–19. 
• In the decade to 2019, Australia’s population rose by 15% while social housing provision has been virtually static for most this period. 

Future prospects 

The inadequacy of Australia’s social and affordable housing provision was cast into sharp relief by the immediate impacts of COVID-19. As the pandemic hit, several state governments acted quickly to accommodate people experiencing homelessness to protect them and prevent associated virus spread. Insufficient access to the longer-term solution that social housing ideally provides will leave governments battling challenges in transitioning temporary hotel residents into permanent homes. 

The future of jobs ​

The World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs report maps the outlook for jobs and skills over the next five years. The COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labour market. 

Key findings 

• Skills gaps continue to be high as in-demand skills across jobs change in the next five years. Skills rising in demand include critical thinking and analysis, problem-solving, active learning, resilience and flexibility. 
• The pace of technology adoption is expected to remain unabated and may accelerate in some areas. This includes cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and e-commerce. 

• Automation, in tandem with the COVID-19 recession, is creating a ‘double-disruption’ scenario for workers. By 2025, the time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will be equal. 
• Inequality is likely to be exacerbated by the dual impact of technology and the pandemic recession. Jobs held by lower-wage workers, women and younger workers were more deeply impacted in the first phase of the economic contraction. 
• Online learning and training is on the rise but looks different for those in employment and those who are unemployed. 
• The window of opportunity to reskill and upskill workers has become shorter in the newly constrained labour market. 

1. What poker can teach us about making good decisions 

In a Fast Company article, a professional poker player who won more than $US4 million in tournaments explains how to make better decisions. We tend to think of decisions as being right or wrong as opposed to in-between. The most useful way to think about a decision is that it’s a prediction of the future and to make decisions based on three Ps: 

• preferences 
• payoffs 
• probabilities.

2. The Nobel prize in economics rewards advances in auction theory

An article in The Economist looks at this year’s Nobel economics prize winners and their work on auction theory and design. Auctions are an ancient mechanism for selling valuable commodities, from fine art to a fisherman’s catch. As their use has expanded, auctions have become more complex, and economists have taken a keener interest. The Nobel winners (Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson) have become the embodiment of the economist as engineer, using theory to devise solutions to practical problems such as radio-spectrum and electricity auctions. 

‘Til the next issue

Maria Katsonis