POLITICAL AMNESIA

Correspondence

Michael Keating and Stephen Sedgwick

We agree with much of Laura Tingle’s perceptive analysis. We question, however, whether advice from the public service is now devalued because of its loss of institutional memory. We also question her conclusion that this memory loss stems from excessive staff mobility between agencies and too much contracting out, which necessarily reduce specialist skills and knowledge. 

The number of separations from the Australian Public Service has remained pretty constant for a long time. Retrenchments are up but resignations are down in recent years, for example. As regards mobility between agencies, the overall rate is 1.6 per cent, which is neither high nor much changed in more than fifteen years. Moreover, among senior staff mobility seems to have fallen. Arguably it ought to be higher, since too many public servants can become stuck in their and their employer’s comfort zone. Shifting between similar agencies can be a learning experience that challenges preconceptions, improves self-knowledge and encourages innovation. Indeed, Tingle approvingly cites the performance of the Department of Finance in the 1980s and 1990s, which pursued a policy of recruiting from other agencies – the average time spent in Finance by most of the subject matter experts was about two years. 

When considering the impact of contracting out on institutional memory, Tingle cites the school-building and home-insulation programs. First, even those who criticise elements of their implementation need to acknowledge that both of these programs supported a lot of employment across the nation, arguably the key objective, and that the improvements in school infrastructure and energy savings are enduring and worthwhile. Second, it is not clear what actual experience of delivery the Australian government was meant to draw on, as it had never been directly engaged in these activities. (It needs to be remembered that the states, not the federal government, deliver the main public services, such as education, health, transport, building and construction and policing.) In the case of pink batts, the environment department acknowledged its lack of expertise and recommended that states or nationally operating contractors deliver the program. It was overruled in favour of delivery by “blokes in utes” – a government decision. Moreover, evidence was tendered to the royal commission that the government was advised (unfortunately not in writing) to delay implementation because of risks. 

Finally, Treasury had advised the government to favour responses to the global financial crisis that could be rolled out quickly (“go hard, go early, go households”) because it had examined what went wrong with the response to the 1990–91 recession. Back then emphasis was given to major infrastructure projects, which state premiers declared to be “shovel-ready”, but in practice about two years elapsed before expenditure fully geared up, which was too late. In 2008–09, smaller projects spread across the country offered a much better chance of forestalling a feared recession.

Frankly we think Tingle very much overstates the role of contracting out in eroding institutional memory. What matters is that governance is designed to maximise the incentives for good performance; that agencies have access to relevant data so that they can evaluate performance; and how curious advisers are to understand their environment and how best to meet policy objectives. When employment services were outsourced in 1998, for example, great care was taken to capture performance information, which was intended to inform both policy and the allocation of future business among the private providers. 

Ultimately, these are issues of organisational capability and culture, which in our experience can be undervalued even when the agency is directly responsible for delivery. Capability of this kind can be built in many ways. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s independent evaluation of all federal government programs was made mandatory. This was intended to force policy-makers to consider what does and doesn’t work, and why. Unfortunately, independent evaluations are much less frequent these days, which may suggest that politicians or senior public servants don’t want to risk receipt of information that reflects badly on their programs. Such attitudes can persist whether or not a program is outsourced.

Notwithstanding these qualifications, we do agree with Tingle that the role of the APS in giving policy advice (and especially unsolicited advice) has been diminished. So too has its capacity to engage in forward-looking strategic thinking. The critical issue is why such a gap exists. Is it, as some have argued, that successive governments have told senior managers that their job is “to do, not to think”? Is it because politics has become more polarised and personalised, with fewer continuous positions across governments? Is it that senior managers give priority to “the relationship” with the minister or the office over “speaking truth to power” and have lost the ability to have difficult conversations? Or is there a failure of communication – in one reviewed case, the senior managers of an agency argued that what the government wanted of them was, in effect, issues management, whereas current and previous ministers expressed concern about the same agency’s lack of strategic focus. Or is the APS culture now so heavily task-focused (and, as some have argued, slimmed down) that there is little time for critical thinking or innovation, which undermines a culture of curiosity and engagement with ideas? This list of suggestions is far from exhaustive – but it has little to do with staff mobility or outsourcing. 

We believe that public servants should be responsive to the government of the day, but they should be able to combine this with a capacity to warn and to suggest alternatives where necessary. Reforms in the 1980s were, inter alia, intended to make the APS more responsive, but unfortunately the pendulum now seems to have swung too far in that direction. Successive governments and the public service leadership probably share responsibility for this. As Tingle comments, “It is not just about politicisation. It is a result of politicians failing to value and preserve institutions.”

Michael Keating and Stephen Sedgwick