This article is written by Monica Pfeffer, PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. Monica previously spent 27 years in the Victorian Government, followed by 12 years at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG).

At ANZSOG Monica’s role was to build bridges between public servants, new research and new ideas coming from universities, public intellectuals and civil society. Monica has lived through several different political regimes and what felt like innumerable machinery of government changes. The latter is the subject of her PhD as she remains puzzled to this day as to why and on what advice decisions to rearrange the departmental landscape are so frequently made.

  • The problem: Prime Ministers (PMs) and Premiers (First Ministers) in the UK and Australia repetitively restructure the functions, structure, governance and names of departments and agencies, without apparent regard to evidence or learning from previous experience.
  • Why it matters: While some degree of restructuring, or ‘Machinery of Government’ (MoG) change as it is frequently known, is inevitable, constant re-arrangement of the bureaucratic landscape has many negative consequences for government performance and the morale, productivity and commitment of individual public servants.
  • The solution: MoG changes will always be with us, but better understanding the beliefs, challenges and past experiences motivating First Ministers might assist in the development of alternative means of achieving their objectives in government.

“We trained hard — but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.” – attributed to Petronius in 201 BC

An Apolitical article earlier this year lamented what every public servant expects: not just death and taxes but an ‘MoG’ (machinery of government) change following an election, a new Prime Minister/Premier, or a particularly ugly crisis in service delivery.

‘MoG’ refers to the way functions and responsibilities are distributed and structured across government; a machinery of government change is the reorganisation of these structures. This can involve establishing, merging or abolishing departments and agencies and transferring functions and responsibilities from one department or agency to another.

How might unpacking decision-makers’ beliefs about restructuring help us to achieve not none, but possibly fewer and more beneficent MoGs?

Some MoG changes are both inevitable and necessary; without them, the UK would still have a Colonial Office and Australia a Department of External Territories. Momentous changes in the external environment like Brexit or the energy transition are likely to require parallel change in the coordinating structures of government. But do they need to be as frequent, as secretive, as disruptive, as costly, as harmful to morale and productivity and as mystifying to public servants, stakeholders and the public as they are at present?

Recent MoG changes in the UK and Australia

In February 2023 new UK PM Rishi Sunak, facing massive economic, social and political crises, announced the biggest MoG reorganisation since 2007, estimated by the Independent to cost more than £100 million. It is unlikely this funding priority was applauded by Britons facing unprecedented levels of food insecurity and housing unaffordability.

Recent elections in Canberra, Victoria and New South Wales have all resulted in MoG changes of varying scale (and varying levels of visible logic). These are not small events of limited consequence. In the Australian state of Queensland, MoG changes in 2020 affected 17 departments (one new, two abolished, 14 restructured), with more than 6,200 staff transferred between departments. Their Audit Office observed critically that over the previous 12 years, no fewer than 190 functions had been transferred between departments, many several times.

Unusually, decisions on the structure of government are the sole prerogative of the UK and Australian Prime Ministers and in Australia’s federal system, of State Premiers. Unless legislative change is required, they can be (and are) announced without consulting the Cabinet or exposing them to Parliamentary scrutiny. This makes them entirely volitional and raises the question, which my doctoral research is hoping to answer: What are the beliefs about the opportunities, challenges and problems facing their government which motivate successive PMs and Premiers to put so much faith in the restructuring lever?

The genesis of MoGs

A combination of academic sources, insights gleaned from my networks amongst political and bureaucratic actors and my own lived experience in the bureaucracy suggest that PMs and Premiers face a bewildering array of policy, administrative and political dilemmas in getting the work of government done. These operate at whole-of-system, Cabinet and individual ministerial/departmental levels and are depicted in the diagram below. My research proposes to test the proposition that every MoG will find its genesis in (a) some combination of these dilemmas, (b) a PM or Premier who believes in restructuring as a way to solve their particular dilemmas (not all do), and (c) someone in the inner circle with a plausible plan which brings together policy, administrative and political rationales.

Policy, administrative and political dilemmas of First Ministers

In my experience, public servants are, at best, resigned to MoGs’ inevitability and focused on how to make the best of them, both personally and organisationally. At worst, they are frustrated, cynical or even bitter, these negative emotions representing one of the many hidden costs of too-frequent restructuring. So, how might unpacking decision-makers’ beliefs about restructuring help us to achieve not none, but possibly fewer and more beneficent MoGs?

First, to the extent that the propensity to restructure reflects elected officials’ frustration with, or suspicion of, the responsiveness and performance of the bureaucracy they inherit, all public servants have a role in capable delivery and building trust and confidence from the governments they serve.

Secondly, the bureaucracy has the opportunity to demonstrate how some of the rationales for restructure such as policy and delivery innovation, collaboration and efficiency can be achieved short of structural change.

Thirdly, the most senior echelons of the bureaucracy need to have well-developed plans for incoming governments which provide options for reform other than MoGs while demonstrating close attentiveness to the constellation of beliefs, dilemmas, experiences and preferences motivating their particular First Minister.

Finally, and noting this already occurs, wise retired political and bureaucratic elders need to use their influence and experience to dissuade First Ministers from pulling the MoG lever as the first resort for putting their mark on government.

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