Fearless Frankies: Bringing APS stewardship to life

This article was originally published on The Mandarin. Read the original article here.

Australian Public Service (APS) stewardship is already a value that lies deep in the heart of most public servants. Articulating it as a formal APS value is a wonderful way to bridge the gap between purpose and behaviours because stewardship is a mindset that informs everything one does.

Stewardship in the public sector goes beyond general ideas of general stewardship to reflect the special context, responsibilities, accountabilities, public expectations, trust and the necessary and helpful checks and balances on the special powers of government.

Below are some thoughts on how the concept of APS stewardship could be made real and pragmatic, to drive real cultural and behavioural change across the public service, which is urgently needed. Each aspect also includes ways you could measure, monitor and incentivise.

A good steward is:

Purpose-oriented — every public servant should know and understand the purpose of their department, portfolio and the public sector more broadly, and should be able to articulate the core responsibilities and relevant competencies needed to deliver on their purpose.

• Every portfolio should have a clear purpose statement that informs the core capabilities and delivery responsibilities. This should be reported on in annual reports and all staff (including executives) could include how they are contributing to that purpose in their performance plans, project plans and programmes. Core capability should be measurable at the departmental level and executives measured on how well they are maintaining the core responsibilities of their department.

Past and future-oriented — you can’t actively be a steward if you don’t have a picture of what “good” looks like to continuously align and aim for, and you can’t avoid mistakes of the past if you don’t maintain institutional memory. This approach should always provide a meaningful counterbalance to short-term urgency and should provide the light on the hill to always navigate through and towards something better.

• All teams should be able to show how they are contributing to the future-state vision whilst also building on lessons learned from the past. Departments should publish all unclassified reports, user research, analyses, assessments, etc. with a useful target and accountability in annual reports.
• Institutional amnesia is a real problem for departments and for the government as a whole. Major work is forgotten mere years afterwards and often repeated again and again in the narrow timeframes and scope of individual projects. This is causing significant duplication. The performance framework could have requirements on how individuals have contributed to knowledge/information sharing and retention.
• If there was a Policy Profession (like the Digital Profession), then perhaps policy futures could be considered on a regular basis, to shift a little capacity to looking forwards at new opportunities rather than always focusing on urgent, immediate and short-term challenges.

Trusted — stewards need to be trustworthy, but the APS is currently dealing with a trust deficit. People in the Australian community and the APS have lost faith and trust in government and the broader APS. Stewardship could explicitly be a mechanism to rebuild and then maintain public trust, creating a more trustworthy public sector.

• Stewardship of trust could include requirements in the APS Charter of Public Engagement/Partnership to seek regular feedback from the public on how the department/portfolio/sector could improve trust. All portfolio departments should have either a requirement for all programmes or a specific programme, to identify and improve business-as-usual operations and public reporting to rebuild public trust and confidence.
• Departments could operate more transparently and share research. What is outlined in the PBS for outcomes could be made more specific. Explanations as to why it has been met (positive) vs why it couldn’t be met (negative), i.e. truth-telling. It provides a true reflection of what elements were successful, what were the failures and what lessons have been learned to avoid in future. Transparency through timely public reporting on programmes and problems builds accountability around risks
• Similarly, departments should consider the effectiveness of the ANAO, senate estimates and other parliamentary-transparency mechanisms as opportunities to amplify and raise issues and evidence to help get better policy outcomes.

Accountable — transparency and accountability are key to integrity. Departments, executives and individuals all should have measures, targets and requirements around reporting, collaboration, feedback, peer review and how they align with the special accountabilities of the public sector. This requires leadership and a proactive approach to transparency, seeking feedback and constructive criticism so as to continually improve programmes, policies and services.

• We could report on transparency measures, public engagement, media engagement, public visibility of reporting, open modelling, etc. The open engagement on early hypothesis work by IP Australia is a great and globally leading exemplar for working more transparently and inviting open peer review. Other indicators might be about how failure was handled, such as “How long did it take to identify an issue and then mitigate it?” (measuring for competence in addressing failure productively). Or, “How much unsolicited feedback did this programme receive, and what proportion was actioned?”. How have the department/executives/public servants tested their process/approach? Have they ensured continuous adaptation to change? The problems “now” are what we “know” not what could be, so should we be undertaking wargaming exercises as regular practice? If we were to ask departments/teams how to respond if X happened, could they respond in the best possible way?

People-oriented — a good steward cares about the entire workforce. It is the seed that will ideally deliver long-term capability and sustainability for the public good. We need to create both a culture of looking after and empowering staff (servant leadership), and a mindset of making work a place where people can grow and be their best selves.

• The APSC could conduct anonymised and randomised 360 reviews (staff, peers and bosses) of executive leaders, starting from the top. This would identify exemplary leaders and help encourage and incentivise future leaders.
• The annual APS census could include standard questions about how much people feel their work is meaningful or aligned to purpose, whether the system helps or hinders good outcomes (and how), and whether they feel empowered to bring their best to the job.
• Exit interviews were put in place to help identify opportunities for improvement and intervention. Could these be publicly or available to an independent party for accountability?
• Targets and requirements around delegation of authority/decision-making could be included in performance planning, along with requirements to collaborate outside the team or department. Some departments currently have dep secs approving working-from-home forms for staff at the APS level. Senior executives should be focused on guidance and delegation at the right and lowest level possible, provided with the appropriate resources and people.

Public-oriented — ‘the people’ are also the people and communities of Australia. Good APS stewards actively work towards, engage with, and are responsive and respectful of the general public.

• The APS could establish a public approach for reporting performance and customer experience (CX) for all services. This could include establishing a whole-of-government CX pipeline to maintain a persistent holistic backlog of improvements and challenges for ongoing prioritisation and patterns analysis. The public should have an easy way to report issues of services or policies in a whole-of-government way. It would be worth building policy, quality of life and portfolio indicators into business cases and public project reporting.

Visible — when trust is important, an authentic public presence is critical. This is extremely important in the public sector because public trust and confidence inform the perceived legitimacy of all that the public sector administers.

• In this way, good stewardship of the public sector must involve a public presence, where public servants are engaged with civil society, not considered separate from it. Where discussions and engagement are directly driven by policymakers, delivery professionals and other experts, rather than mediated by the communications team.
• An authentic public presence is about the public being able to see and trust the professionalism, expertise and commitment to the public good that most public servants demonstrate. The public saw this, often for the first time, in the frontline staff presentations to the Robodebt royal commission. The construction of a shiny marketing arm only hurts public trust, as people and public servants are unable to engage authentically with each other.
• We need to have clear and proactive support, guidance and endorsement for public servants to engage online and in public, to reverse a decade of fear and punishment. Public sector experts should be encouraged to share their expertise and participate in non-government professional communities, and to engage in their professional context for public input, peer review and feedback. Public visibility of public sector expertise helps build trust and confidence in the capability and competency of public institutions. This could also be incentivised in performance plans, but also in departmental targets for informal communications and knowledge sharing of staff.

Balanced — finally, being a public servant in the APS means equally serving the government, the parliament and the people.

• The Secretaries Handbook needs to be rewritten. The ‘Better Policy Guide’ needs to provide guidance on all forms of policy (not just advice to the government).
• Departments could return to briefing the cabinet rather than just briefing their minister, and there are several other mechanisms required to incentivise a more balanced sector. At an individual and executive level, there could be targets on how they are serving all three groups.
• There needs to be leadership from the APSC on moving to an “integrity through transparency” mindset, rather than the “need to know” mindset that has created an artificial limitation on collaboration and transparency.
• Secretary workplace agreements need to be reconsidered, and perhaps a return to long-term tenures rather than contracts (which have become highly political) to enable more stewardship culture at the top and sustainability of deliverables over time.

Although parliamentary staff and ministers are not under the APS values, we discussed the idea of how APS stewardship could be taught and considered part of political training and preparation. This would act to ensure that all political offices understand and exemplify good stewardship, whether in government, opposition or on the cross benches, including the special role of senate estimates and other mechanisms for accountability and assurance by the parliament.

We believe stewardship needs to be cemented in policy to make it explicit and consistently applied. Below are some thoughts to consider, followed by some specific definitions and ways to measure/monitor/incentivise.

• What will it do?
• What are the deliverables?
• How would you differentiate good stewardship from bad?
• The “way” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “winning” (i.e. coaching a sports team), rather it’s change-planning.
• What’s the generational change?
• What is success? Policy? Public outcomes/impacts? Delivery? On-time/budget?
• What are the contingencies?
• What is in place for sustainment?
• Stewards necessarily need to have accountability and ownership for the domain they administer, with delegated authority.

Only then can we have measurables that will drive genuine change.

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