Public Sector Informant: Public servants have agency - so let's harness it

On the other hand, we have had the public service involved in some less than positive cases:

This mixed performance is not a new development: readers will recall public servants' role in the failures of the 2009 home insulation program, but also how agencies responded to the Bali bombing in 2002, which became a case study in taking action quickly and across the whole of government.

What connects these cases? It is the influence - sometimes positive, sometimes not - exercised by public servants. Public servants clearly have agency; the question is, what sort of agency do we want them to have and how can it best be deployed for the public good?

"Agency" in this sense was once rarely heard in public service circles, but it can be heard in recent times, especially as practitioners and researchers ponder lessons from the pandemic response.

The notion of public service agency gives political leaders - if they are willing and able - a foundation to strengthen the role of government and to augment their own policy effort.

Not doing so risks egregious failures such as the "car parks" case. In his detailed examination of the case, The Public Sector Informant's Richard Mulgan drew attention to the role of public servants in "conniving in, or at least condoning" their ministers' "contempt of due process". This, though problematic, is still a form of agency.

On the other hand, effective use of the power and energy of the public service can generate good outcomes for all concerned, as emphasised by public administration expert Helen Dickinson when she recently spoke of agency as underpinning a new international handbook on public service.

It may help to define the term as we use it. "Public service agency" is the inherent capacity of public servants - and their organisations - to influence the formulation and implementation of government policies.

This form of agency is:

Crucially, agency is related to but differs from other forms of power. Unlike political power, public service agency need not be a zero-sum game. A public servant who garners and exercises agency does not necessarily diminish or challenge the power of others, especially ministers. Politicians should value the public service as a partner in developing and implementing policy, not as a competitor for power, nor as a servile factotum.

Clearly, bureaucratic agency is crucial to civil society and political discourse. Public servants exercising appropriate agency can facilitate but should not dominate or distort policy deliberation, decision-making and implementation.

How do we get more "good" agency from our public servants? We can start by giving them:

Troublingly, there are times public servants' agency is barely acknowledged or even actively suppressed. This means it is little more than a matter of chance whether that agency has a positive or negative impact on policymaking and implementation. So far during the pandemic, our good fortune has mostly held, but we can't keep relying on luck. We must actively manage the role of the public service.

The starting point is for leaders to see that public servants' agency is foundational to our system of government. Trying to suppress it risks distorted and negative outcomes. The next step is to build this agency into the lexicon, valuing and celebrating it, not hiding it from view. Examples of positive agency should be rewarded. There are many to choose from in the public service's recent history.

One example of "under the radar" agency is the National Library of Australia's unique Trove service. Many Australians know and use Trove, but few know its history of patient innovation and development, and sheer effort by generations of public servants. Unique in the world, Trove brings together digital material held by hundreds of institutions, and metadata about the non-digital holdings in all Australian national, state and university libraries.

Since developing a multi library database in 1981, the NLA has invested about $100 million in Trove, using its recurrent funds plus some recent government funding. It is a long story of hard decisions, active collaboration with many institutions, and the nurturing of specialist capability in the NLA.

The Trove story also shows that a federated system can work to deliver major benefits, with virtually no ministerial or line department oversight or involvement. Yet Trove is a major part of the nation's research and cultural infrastructure, enabling us to get to know ourselves and our histories.

The key authority for Trove has been the NLA's legislated national leadership in developing library services and its governing council, guiding and enabling the public service agency that underpins the Trove story.

Another example is the Working on Country (Indigenous Rangers) program, one of the most successful Commonwealth programs improving the well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It started in 2007 with funding for 100 Indigenous rangers to undertake environmental protection and repair. It now supports 129 projects and more than 2000 rangers with more than $100m annually, in place until 2028.

Working on Country was developed through deep consultation with Aboriginal communities. It reflects their strengths, wishes and priorities. But doctoral research by Kathleen Mackie also found a key "unexpected" success factor to be the agency of public servants.

Dr Mackie found that key public servants seized the opportunity of the winding down of the Community Development Employment Program in 2007 to propose a new environmental program, based on some existing ranger projects. Environment Department officials drafted a small new policy proposal and the secretary did something quite unusual. He took senior people from the departments of Treasury, Finance and Prime Minister and Cabinet to visit nascent ranger groups in the Northern Territory. That visit was crucial to building support for the initial ranger proposal.

Public servants continued to actively promote the program with their colleagues and with ministers, and have seized all opportunities to go for funding, under both Coalition and Labor governments. Over subsequent years the program has weathered changes in governments, their philosophies, and machinery of government changes.

Public servants at both federal and state levels have also played a key role at critical stages in early childhood education reform over the past 20 years. By the end of the 20th century, the Commonwealth was a bit player in early education, resulting in a fragmented system and poor educational and developmental outcomes.

In the early 2000s, champions within and outside government opened a "policy window". The heads of Treasury (Ken Henry) and the Employment Department (Peter Boxall) both publicly called for investment in preschool, while the head of the Education Department (Steve Sedgwick) invested policy effort in this emerging area. Prime Minister John Howard subsequently agreed to include early childhood in the Council of Australian Government's new productivity agenda in 2006.

Early childhood education became an early battleground in the 2007 national election. Kevin Rudd's Labor opposition made ambitious early childhood reform a signature element of its proposed "Education Revolution" reforms, with support from a phalanx of state Labor governments, who in turn were strongly supported by several key officials. Labor's "Plan for Early Childhood" was based on international research showing the return on investment in "universal preschool for four-year-olds".

As an example of partnership across political and bureaucratic levels, this remains an important example of agency exerted by public servants within both tiers of government to address a significant gap in Australia's education system.

The notion of agency needs to be built into public servants' professional ethos, through formal and informal training and education, and through on-the-job practice, which is how public servants learn much of their craft.

Informing such a shift in our collective understanding of public service, there needs to be sustained research and discussion about how public servants exercise agency, taking the lid off the black box and helping us all better understand this crucial factor in the nation's life.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: