How to Improve Decision Making in Public Administration – Reflections from the NDIS
We rely on the public service to implement sweeping policy decisions and reform – but we have had some recent examples of what can go wrong when the decision-makers don’t get it quite right. In today’s blog, Andrew Joyce and Fiona Buick share insights from their examination of how the NDIS was rolled out. Interviews identified key points where the decision-making process could have been more robust. The authors reflect on what the public service could learn from this case study.
Recent exposures in robust policy implementation
Over the past couple of decades, Australia has witnessed a string of high-profile policy failures and challenges, each with significant human and economic costs. These problems have been exposed through a number of royal commissions across aged care, disability, the Home Insulation Program (“pink batts”), and the banking and financial services. The recent child care crisis has led Michell Grattan to question how it is possible that some of these problems were not anticipated, and the overall capacity of the public service is inadequate. This raises a question: are public service organisations making decisions in a way that reliably produces good outcomes?
Our research suggests that part of the answer may lie in how decisions are made inside government. The study examined the decision-making process behind the development of the NDIS and finds that public administration organisations may lack the tools and processes that many other industries use to manage human decision-making bias.
Our case study: The NDIS design and delivery process
Challenging assumptions and debating unintended consequences could lead to more robust policy implementation. Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
We conducted in-depth interviews with 58 senior figures involved in designing and delivering the NDIS, including senior public servants, policy advisers, and delivery agency leaders. What we found was significant individual capacity to solve complex problems and an incredible work ethic to deliver transformative large-scale change in a very short time period. There was terrific decision-making skill in being able to align interests and progress the NDIS across the myriad of governments and agencies involved. Despite the professionalism of those involved, the study found a notable absence of formal decision-making processes.
While there were instances where data-driven decision-making and risk assessments processes were used, this was inconsistently applied. Interview participants explicitly noted the absence of formal decision-making procedures or guidelines for key decisions.
Someone’s making a decision and saying, ‘well, this is the way we’re going to go’, without what I would have thought you would want in an organisation which is a lot of discussion and debate amongst the very senior people, to say, can we get this as right as possible?
Strengthening decision-making processes
This left key decisions vulnerable to biases. Industries like medicine, engineering, and business now actively work to prevent biases and improve decision-making through structured decision-making protocols. There are a range of tactics that could be used in public administration which the World Bank has trialled. This could include having different individuals within a team or even a different team being given the specific role to produce counter viewpoints. Another example is viewing alternative framing of the problem which can lead to different solutions.
Finally, as another example, a process developed by Gary Klein which he has called ‘Premortem’ involves imagining that the project has failed and then coming up with a list of factors to explain this failure. Using hindsight thinking to predict problems has been shown to be more effective than traditional risk analysis. We have previously written about how using a pre-mortem technique might have helped prevent the COVID-19 hotel quarantine failure in Victoria.
Our research highlights the need to modernise and strengthen decision-making processes in public administration. The challenge will be to identify those key decisions for which to implement such processes. By drawing on the expertise of organisational psychologists and decision science, governments can implement systems that improve how risk is assessed, how assumptions are challenged, and how strategic thinking is embedded in practice.
Introducing systematic processes to challenge assumptions, surface blind spots, and reduce bias could improve the quality of public policy and help prevent future failures. This in turn can help governments save money. If we want better outcomes, we need better decisions and that starts with better decision-making processes.
Read more: Joyce, A., Carey, G., & Buick, F. (2025). Strengths, Gaps, and Challenges in the Decision-Making Processes in the Design of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Australia. Administrative Sciences, 15(7), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci15070255
Acknowledgement: To Professor Gemma Carey both for her leadership in the sector and in particular this study.
Dr Andrew Joyce is with the Centre for Social Impact Swinburne. Associate Professor Fiona Buick is with the UNSW Canberra School of Business.
Posted by Dr Susan Maury, moderator.