When you’ve got a case of policy-based evidence rather than evidence-based policy — and other service-delivery challenges

THE OBSERVER: With service delivery being the new black, middle-ranking public servants might be wondering whether being the meat in the sandwich is ever going to get any easier. And that’s not only a question for public servants.

Cross-sectoral collaboration not only involves the three tiers of government, each with their own internal silos, but also various mixes of not-for-profit, corporate, academic, community, and philanthropic organisations and representatives.

So many voices and, as Catherine Althaus and Carmel McGregor pointed out in their Australia and New Zealand School of Government paper commissioned for the Thodey review, “no guiding set of administrative principles or coordinated, holistic architecture either within the [Australian Public Service], or across the APS and other levels of government … to fully support and enable local delivery solutions.