As the first of its kind internationally, the Centre of Research Excellence in Disability and Health (CRE-DH) is Australia's new national research centre to improve the health of people with disabilities. The CRE-DH, in collaboration with key stakeholders, will gather the evidence needed to guide social and health policy reform. How will the organisation work? CRE-DH's Celia Green and Zoe Aitken explain.
Read MoreUN Gender Training is a policy that aims to reduce harmful behaviours in peacekeepers and unintended negative effects of peacekeeping missions; but does this well-intentioned, academically based, and centrally designed policy actually work in real life? In this article, Lisa Carson of UNSW Canberra's Public Service Research Group discusses the need for openness and knowledge transfer to strengthen policy design and implementation.
Read More"Joined-up government" has been around for some time and is still present in the lexicon of Australian politicians and public servants. But have we learned from our previous attempts at integrated approaches to government? In 2014, The Mandarin's David Donaldson spoke to UNSW Canberra's Gemma Carey, Fiona Buick, and Deborah Blackman as well as University of Melbourne's Janine O'Flynn and retired professor John Halligan about their views on this topic, and their comments are just as relevant today.
Read MoreThe Productivity Commission released the position paper National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Cost earlier this month. Today's post is from UNSW Canberra's Public Service Research Group's Helen Dickinson, who provides a succinct analysis of the report's findings. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read MoreCan using expectancy theory to manage expectations improve the operationlization of employee performance management and increase the possibility of creating high performance? Prof. Deborah Blackman, Dr. Fiona Buick, Prof. Janine O'Flynn, Prof. Michael O'Donnell and Dr. Damian West have published a paper on this very topic, and here's their summary of their study.
Read MorePolicy change in health often seems to be a reactive process with high profile failures in the delivery of healthcare prompting significant changes. Alison Brown, PhD candidate, University of Melbourne considers why major reforms in health care policy often seem driven by disaster rather than design.
Read MoreThe controversies of the 2016 census now seem in the distant past but the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is busy collating the numbers from last year’s eventful census and are preparing for the release of data over the coming months. Stephen Gow, from specialist health system advisory service Open Advisory Pty Ltd, considers how the census powers our understanding of the notion of “place”.
Read MoreOlder adults are highly motivated to participate in research and rate depression as a priority research topic. So why aren’t we involving them more in research and policy development? Meg Polacsek, PhD Candidate, Victoria University, considers the importance of engaging with these members of our community.
Read MoreAustralia’s system of home ownership is, very slowly, starting to break. Since the 1950s we have enjoyed high levels of home ownership. Public policy helped people buy a home, which supported security in older age. Because ownership was ubiquitous, private renting was allowed to become insecure. In this post, Ben Spies-Butcher discusses the implications of this trend.
Read MoreSuicide is complex, but helping to prevent suicide doesn’t have to be. Everyone has a role to play and there are some seemingly small changes, that we can all make, that have a big impact. Thinking about the language that we use can do just that. While our language can convey compassion, provide hope, empowerment and optimism, we can also unwittingly express messages that divide and stigmatise. This blog post by Emma Neilsen discusses how even everyday expressions may carry connotations we have not considered and speak to ideas we don’t condone.
Read MoreLast week marked the launch of the new Public Service Research Group (PSRG) at UNSW Canberra. PSRG has been established to partner with organisational clients to produce new insights into effective public service implementation and evaluation. Stephen Easton was at the launch and reports below. This post originally appeared on The Mandarin.
The 2017 Federal budget unveiled by the Coalition held many surprises, mainly in the efforts it went to achieve distance from the disastrous 2014 budget. With significant investment into education, health and housing, some even called it a ‘Labor light budget’. However, these positive inputs are offset by the increasingly punitive approach to people on welfare, contrary to what evidence indicates is effective policy. In today’s post Kathy Landvogt highlights some of the most concerning aspects of the government’s stance towards people on welfare and how it will set Australia back as the land of the ‘fair go.’ This blog originally appeared on the Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand web site.
Read MoreFrom the online portal to enrolment targets to workforce shortages, the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been plagued with difficulties. But A/Prof Helen Dickinson (@DrHDickinson) cautions that we don't yet have enough information to make definitive statements about success and failure. We should expect some challenges to arise as the NDIS is implemented, and this doesn’t mean that the idea is fundamentally flawed.
Read MoreGovernments wringing too many savings out of outsourced risk is threatening the commercial and political sustainability of the whole enterprise, warns one of Australia’s top government contracting experts. For the Australia and New Zealand School of Government's Prof Gary Sturgess, it’s becoming a ‘game of chicken’ where the players want out.
Read MoreWhat's a program? What's program management? Differences in how we use these words matter, argues UNSW Canberra's Dr Raymond Young - and the project management discipline needs to adapt its language use if it wants to help government deliver better results.
Read MoreCollaboration is a popular and often routine exercise for the public, private and community sectors to develop a common purpose, as well as co-design and/or co-deliver policies or services. But the costs of these interactions are often underestimated. Robyn Keast, Michael Charles and Piotr Modzelewski argue that a detailed cost-benefit analysis should be undertaken before undergoing collaboration.
Read MoreCommissioning is like a unicorn? (Are your eyes deceiving you?) Although this might sound like a bizarre analogy, Helen Dickinson, director of UNSW Canberra's Centre for Public Service Research, illustrates the surprising ties between the mystical creature and public sector commissioning in this repost from her blog.
Read MoreIs aggressive outsourcing of government services affecting service quality and trust? The Mandarin's David Donaldson spoke to contracting expert and NSW Premier's ANZSOG Chair of Public Service Delivery Gary Sturgess for his take on the matter. This post originally appeared on The Mandarin.
Read MoreIn recent years, social services recipients have had limited choice in service providers, but in New South Wales, these choices are further restricted by the state government's transfer of disability services to the non-government sector. The blog post below is NSW Council for Intellectual Disability's commentary on this development, and is a repost from the Council's website.
Read More