r Raymond Young UNSW Canberra
‘Lifting the bonnet on Australia’s schools” is the provocative title of a recent Productivity Commission draft report1. It seems that spending per student has increased by 14% over the past 10 years but performance has not improved. However, it would have been far better if the report “lifted the bonnet on policy in general” because there is evidence that suggests little to none of our spending delivers the desired outcomes.
Read MoreBy Gerard Brody and David Tennant
Gerard Brody is the CEO of the Consumer Action Law Centre and David Tennant CEO of Shepparton–based FamilyCare. Both participated in the Advisory Committee for the CSI/NAB Financial Resilience in Australia 2015 Research.
Read MoreBy Professor Catherine Althaus (@AlthausCat), at the Australian and New Zealand School of Government
Thought-provoking discussions are taking place in Canada and Australia about the future of the public service. Having worked and researched in both jurisdictions, I know there is great value in comparative intelligence that probes the policy transfer between these countries.
Read MoreA social policy whisper piece by Robyn Keast on collaboration.
Read MoreThe Director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science says the ‘big data revolution’ in the social sciences isn’t about data itself – it’s about advances in how we analyse increasing quantities of diverse data to generate ‘usable information’. Professor Gary King contends the emergence of “larger scale, collaborative, interdisciplinary, lab-style research teams” could herald the end of the qualitative-quantitative divide in social science research. This post by Michael Todd originally appeared on the LSE Impact Blog.
Read MoreIn this post, Julie Thompson Klein draws together and guides us through the “abundance of resources” that exist to help teams working on inter- and transdisciplinary projects find common ground and advance common goals. The post includes links to five searchable repositories to assist researchers in this sphere. This post originally appeared on the Integration and Implementation Insights blog and is reposted with permission.
Read MoreLinked data sets could shed much-needed light on how different issues and systems affect people accessing social services. However Brooke McKail from the Victorian Council of Social Service reminds us that sharing data has potential risks as well as potential benefits for service users, calling for careful consideration of how to protect individuals from its negative consequences. This post originally appeared on the VCOSS Voice blog.
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Market models of delivering publicly-funded services are underpinned by systems and processes of measurement designed to change the way citizens and service providers behave and interact. David Beer argues that to understand how markets shape our behaviour, we need to think about the role of measurement in our lives and reflect on how it makes us feel. This post originally appeared on the LSE Politics and Policy blog.
Read MoreIn today’s post, James McDougall examines Australia’s inconsistent record of promoting the rights of children. He argues that instead of simply reacting to policy failure, we must coordinate planning, effort, knowledge and resources across jurisdictions to improve the wellbeing of all young Australians.
Read MoreIn a recent interview on 3CR’s Solidarity Breakfast, Susan Feldman discussed gendered disadvantage and the need to look at men’s and women’s different experiences of ageing.
Read MoreIn this post from Christina Boswell's Politics, Knowledge and Migration blog, Christina and Eugenia Rodrigues look at the implementation of central government 'targets', arguing that the problem-policy 'fit' must be strong for implementation to be effective.
Read MoreIn August 2016 the Department of Employment released the first Star Ratings for service providers under the new employment services regime. The payment structure for providers, as argued by the Employment Minister, Michaelia Cash, is ‘more clearly tied to achieving sustained employment outcomes, with outcome payments heavily weighted towards placing the most disadvantaged people into employment.’ In this post, Kate O’Hara from JobVoice – an independent service operated by Social Security Rights Victoria – helps us understand the Star Ratings basics for jobseekers.
Read MoreIn this post, author and disability advocate Dr Peter Gibilisco offers a perspective on the role of affirmative action as a policy approach to promote inclusion of people living with disabilities. This post originally appeared on the Pearls and Irritations blog.
Read MoreThere have been various attempts in Australian research to measure the 'multidimensional' nature of poverty- that is, adding things like rental stress or health inequity to ordinary income measures. In this post, which originally appeared on the LSE Politics & Policy blog, Rod Hick looks at comparing multidimensional and income poverty measures.
Read MoreA new research report, Poor housing quality: Prevalence and health effects, has found that a growing number of Australian households living in poor quality and unhealthy housing are doubly disadvantaged—by the quality of their housing and because policy makers in Australia do not acknowledge the health effects of housing.
In the article below, report authors Emma Baker, Andrew Beer, and Rebecca Bentley outline the need for urgent action, warning that otherwise we risk becoming "a nation scarred once again by slums, reduced life chances and shortened lives."
Read MoreTwitterview: The ecological systems of public policy: keeping them open, healthy and sustainable through strategic, multilevel collaboration.
Thanks to Good Shepherd Australia and New Zealand's Women's Research Advocacy & Policy for putting together these Storify accounts of the 2016 Power to Persuade symposium, held in Melbourne on Monday, 15 August.
Read MoreThe United States spends more on health care than any other developed nation, yet a recent study suggests social services spending has a greater impact on health outcomes. This post, by Elizabeth H. Bradle and Lauren A. Taylor was published at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation blog and is republished here with permission.
Read MoreI feel sorry for today’s students and educators. At every step of the process they are both told to be more innovative, more entrepreneurial, to prepare for this new world that no one actually can yet describe. We are beset with paralysis, be it students unable to visualize realistic role models or educators unsure of what is required of them. We are told that we have outgrown an education system designed for the industrial revolution. That the world no longer cares what you know, just what you can do with what you know. Increasingly institutions look beyond their best assets in search of golden ideas elsewhere, hoping to import programs and best practice. Guess what? They are kidding themselves.
Read MoreIf you missed or want to revisit Putting Women at the Centre: a policy forum, hosted by Power to Persuade and Good Shepherd Australia and New Zealand (GSANZ), here are links to Storify accounts of the day put together from Twitter by Susan Maury and the GSANZ team.
Read MoreConcurrent with Putting Women at the Centre: A Policy Forum, we are running some accompanying blog posts. In this post, Helen Dickinson (@DrHDickinson) draws on her forthcoming article 'What can feminist theory offer policy implementation challenges?' to explore how feminist thinking can help us move beyond a simplistic view of collaboration as coordinating activity across a number of actors.
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