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Academy of the Social Sciences

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Submission from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Ltd

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The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP

PO Box 6021, Parliament House

CANBERRA ACT 2600

Dear Prime Minister,

The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia welcomes the opportunity to make a

submission to the Independent Review of the Australian Public Service.

The below submission examines the capability, culture, and operating model of the APS. It

makes eight recommendations, each of which are designed to ensure the APS is ready, over

the coming decades, to best serve Australia in:

 driving innovation and productivity in the economy
 delivering high quality policy advice, regulatory oversight, programs and services
 tackling complex, multi-sectoral challenges in collaboration with the community,
business and citizens
 ensuring our domestic, foreign, trade and security interests are coordinated and well
managed
 improving citizens’ experience of government and delivering fair outcomes for them
 acquiring and maintaining the necessary skills and expertise to fulfil its
responsibilities

In examining these issues, the Academy’s submission considers the suitability of the APS’s

architecture and governing legislation. It will also consider how the APS monitors and

measures performance, and how it ensures the transparent and most effective use of

taxpayers’ money in delivering outcomes.

The Academy is also in a position to provide expert witnesses in service of the Review. In

this spirit, we commend Professor James Walter FASSA, Professor Meredith Edwards AM

FASSA FIPAA, Professor Brian Head FASSA, and Professor Anne Tiernan to you. All are

authorities in this area, and will be pleased to help as required.

The Academy stands ready to assist with further development of these policy initiatives.

Yours sincerely,

Glenn Withers AO FASSA

President
The Australia Public Service and

the Social Sciences

Academy response to Inquiry into the Australian Public Service

Professor Glenn Withers AO (Academy President)
Professor James Walter

Professor Meredith Edwards AM

Professor Brian Head

Professor Anne Tiernan

26 Balmain Crescent, Acton ACT 2601

GPO Box 1956, Canberra ACT 2601

P: +61 2 6249 1788

ABN: 59 957 839 703

www.assa.edu.au
Table of Contents

Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 3

  1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 4
  2. Access, Relationships, and Context ......................................................................................... 8
  3. Data Infrastructure ................................................................................................................. 10
  4. General Reflections ............................................................................................................... 12
  5. Conclusion and Recommendations........................................................................................ 15

Page 2 of 18
Overview

This submission examines the capability, culture and operating model of the APS. It

makes eight practical recommendations to help ensure the APS is ready, over the coming

decades, to best serve Australia in:
 driving innovation and productivity in the economy
 delivering high quality policy advice, regulatory oversight, programs and services
 tackling complex, multi-sectoral challenges in collaboration with the community,
business and citizens
 ensuring our domestic, foreign, trade and security interests are coordinated and
well managed
 improving citizens’ experience of government and delivering fair outcomes for them
 acquiring and maintaining the necessary skills and expertise to fulfil its
responsibilities

In examining these issues, the submission considers the suitability of the APS’s

architecture and governing legislation. It also considers how the APS monitors and

measures performance, and how it ensures the transparent and most effective use of

taxpayers’ money in delivering outcomes.

Eight direct APS relevant recommendations emerge from this exposition and are

summarised at the end of the submission.

The submission more broadly stresses the importance of a healthy social sciences

education, research and analytic foundation for the effective functioning of the Australian

public service in public policy formation and its implementation in Australia. The

submission therefore also recommends that overall funding for social sciences education

and research must match or exceed world standards if their ongoing contribution to public

service capability and performance is to be sustained and enhanced. Current per student

and per researcher support is limiting this pay-off. This is ‘short-termism’ in government.

Page 3 of 18
1. Introduction

There is evidently a current commitment in the Australian Public Service (APS) to ‘evidence

informed’ policy making, acknowledging the potential contribution of research expertise in this

process, and the necessity of robust competition in the debate about policy options. Acceptance of

such principles by the APS is implicitly based on an appreciation of and responsiveness to

community perceptions, a constructive relationship between policy practitioners and research

professionals, and the necessity of dialogue and debate. This submission focuses on the

relationship between the policy domain and the research community.

The capability of the APS depends upon its access to rigorous evidence that can strengthen the

quality, innovation and productivity of its policy advice. While experience, knowledge and

practitioner wisdom coming from within the APS itself are essential, much of the expertise on

which it must draw comes from other sources—most importantly, we contend, either directly from

major research institutions, or indirectly from them (as mediated by consultants, think tanks and

ministerial staff).

At the same time, government agencies, government actions and associated policy demands have

been the catalysts for large investments to generate significant data sets. This administrative and

statistical data, properly managed and with sufficient transparency, should articulate smoothly with

publicly funded research—a virtuous circle of benefit both to continuing research and to the policy

domain.

The current review of the APS provides a welcome opportunity to examine the relationship

between the APS and the publicly funded research community. What could be done to enhance

that relationship, in ways that meet the specified objectives of the current review?

The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA), since its inception, has seen its mission as

being to promote “excellence in the social sciences in Australia, and in their contribution to public

policy.” One of the core disciplines within ASSA, economics, was the progenitor of the

incorporation of research professionals into the APS since the 1930s (Coleman, Cornish and

Hagger, 2006) and has remained integral to policy deliberation. Since the 1950s, social science

disciplines more broadly have been drawn into public policy circles (see e.g. Edwards et al., 2001;
Head and Walter, 2015).

Page 4 of 18
It is no surprise then that 56% of APS employees have a social science background and that this

influence is even more prominent in senior positions, with 62% of SES employees coming from

social science disciplines (APSED, 2017).

Every year, ASSA organises a national symposium addressing a significant social issue. ASSA

engages interdisciplinary cohorts to report on and suggest resolutions to such issues, with

potential policy impact. Direct engagement with senior public officials is often a feature of these

events.

ASSA has recently charted the significance of all of the social sciences in a series of case studies

demonstrating policy impacts in a report entitled The Social Sciences Shape the Nation (ASSA,
2017a). For instance, if reflection is given to Australia’s particular global policy achievements,
social science contributions are distinctive and strong across each of:

 Health, Education and Welfare, which have seen policies such as Medibank,
HECS and child support.
 Economic, Social and Environment Policies, which have seen global standard
policy initiatives in monetary policy setting, compulsory superannnuation and water
management.
 The Law, Justice and Culture scene, where Australia has developed native title,
restorative justice and multicultural points system immigration.

These are only selected examples. But they show the value of past sound social science

across academic and government roles.

Page 5 of 18
The complexity of contemporary policy challenges, has reinforced the importance of research

across a wide range of the social sciences and the integration of that in turn with other areas of

analysis such as sciences, engineering and humanities, as an emerging imperative.

For example, the priority accorded to innovation is likely to founder unless there is appropriate

recognition of how the social sciences have enabled us to identify the sources of resistance to

innovative reforms and how such resistance can be countered (Juma, 2016). Another instance:
while the science of climate change is widely acknowledged, the policy implications constitute an

enormous collective action problem whose solution depends on a close understanding of many

social science fields. Expertise is demanded to address dilemmas such as how to stimulate

behaviour change and community commitment; how to communicate in ways that will not trigger

automatic identity-based responses and cognitive closure; how to tackle institutional path

dependency; and how to mobilise international constituencies—a complex web of sociology, social

and cognitive psychology, communications, and political science at the very least. Even the much

vaunted dedication to ‘evidence based policy’ needs to be alert to the analyses of what constitutes

evidence, for whom and in what circumstances (Head, 2016).

Indeed, it is difficult to envisage any element of significant policy development that could afford to

ignore the implementation challenges presented by patterns of rapid social change and its effects

on community attitudes and behaviour (Juma, 2016). These include, for example, entrenched

partisan belief systems (Cohen, 2003; Fielding et al., 2012); the unintended consequences of the

reform era (Walter and Holbrook, 2018); the retreat to web-based ‘echo chambers’ diminishing our

capacity for national conversation (Lanchester, 2017; Wu, 2017); and the transformation of political

parties, executive behaviour and public sector advisory channels themselves (Strangio, ‘t Hart and

Walter, 2017; Tiernan, 2011, 2016). These are all the terrain of the social sciences: hence complex

and intractable policy problems will not be resolved without the incorporation of the social sciences
(APSC, 2007; Head and Alford, 2015).

In the face of such complexities, both researchers and public servants have raised the question of

whether the current political and advisory arrangements, arguably developed in relation to social,
economic and political patterns that have irrevocably changed, remain fit for purpose (IPAA-ACT,
2018). This is not a novel question, and has been raised repeatedly in past reviews of the APS
(see e.g. Lindquist, 2010). It would be apposite now to assess the extent to which the

recommendations of these previous exercises in self-reflection have been implemented, and the

reasons for both successes and failures. [Recommendation 1]

Page 6 of 18
It is also clear to those of us who observe policy processes that major policy challenges demand

not only interdisciplinary expertise, but also multi-level or multi-jurisdictional responses; they

cannot be resolved solely by the APS. The formation of the Council of Australian Governments
(COAG) foreshadowed this necessity: it should be seen as a fundamental vehicle for Australian

governance. We believe it currently lacks the support systems and the strategic focus needed,
including a relevant research base, to address the challenging tasks that the country requires.
COAG needs structures, processes, and advisory capacity that are more independent of the

Commonwealth government, and administrative heft to match the importance of its role.
[Recommendation 2].

From the perspective of the research community, the challenges of contemporary social

complexity in highly contestable domains of policy deliberation mean that the APS cannot afford to

operate in isolation. It is far from being the sole voice (and in some instances, perhaps not even

the preferred voice) informing the political executive. We strongly endorse point 3 of the current

review’s terms of reference, which recognises this. On one side, the APS must enlist community

input and participation. On the other—the dimension with which this submission is concerned—it

must utilise reliable research networks and the highest quality evidence. The next section provides

some mechanisms for doing that.

Hence, there must be more inter-sectoral co-operation. This could sustain jointly-created and

broad-based intellectual eco-systems, and ‘encompassing groups’ that might serve as advocacy

coalitions for practical policy development. Practitioner wisdom and research experience can assist

in determining how to create such encompassing groups. It is imperative for the boundaries of

policy discussion to be more porous. That in turn will depend upon three things: the nature of

access; effective relationships; and better understanding (among all parties) of context.

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2. Access, Relationships, and Context

A recurrent impediment in the relationship between policy makers and researchers is the failure of

the latter to appreciate the imperatives and the constraints influencing the work of policy makers.
Too often, researchers expect to gain access to influence solely on the basis of expertise. They

regard the significance of their findings as self-evident, needing little further argument or

justification and heedless of context. It is hoped that changes to research and higher education

policy incorporating impact measures, which enjoin researchers to work more closely with partners

in industry, the community and the public sector to gain impact, will provide ongoing incentives for

more consistent social engagement, including deeper relationships with the APS.

The experiential deficit of researchers concerning the policy sector might also be addressed by

collaboration between Universities and the APS—perhaps facilitated by both ASSA and the

APSC—to facilitate secondments of relevant experts to particular departmental policy teams for a

period. By the same token, secondment of individuals from within the APS to identified research

teams within Universities for a period might provide hands-on research experience, valuable

thinking time and ‘over the horizon’ perspectives. [Recommendation 3]

Further, it has been the experience of some involved in authoring this submission that intensive

training programs on understanding policy contexts and how to pitch policy proposals to public

agencies (programs developed jointly between public policy academics, with former politicians and

public servants), can be very effective in addressing the experiential deficit of our academic peers
(see Laing and Wallis, 2016). Such initiatives until now have been short term and confined to

particular partnerships (in this instance, a sector specific Cooperative Research Centre). Could

such an initiative be extended? The possibility that the ANZSOG model—currently oriented

towards academics training public servants in institutional and organizational dynamics and policy

case studies—might be extended to offering training to academics in how to engage with policy

agencies should be considered. [Recommendation 4]

At the same time, it is clear that current incentives for researchers, not only through impact

measures, but also in the utilization of funding schemes such as the Australian Research Council’s

Linkage and Cooperative Research Centre Programs, place the onus on researchers to find

appropriate partners for socially engaged research. Yet they are at a disadvantage in identifying

potential avenues for collaboration. In the public sector, at present, despite ad hoc appeals for

submissions to particular inquiries (which ASSA makes considerable efforts to disseminate via its

Fellowship network) there is no systematic means for researchers to see what the current needs of

departments and agencies are. It would assist research/policy engagement if APS departments

Page 8 of 18
were encouraged to maintain an updated register of immediate priorities and emergent issues in

their domains with which researchers could match their research interests. [Recommendation 5]

Two contextual features that hinder sustainable research/practitioner relationships are the

increasing rapidity of staff turnover and churn within both Universities and the APS, and the

intensification of partisanship in the political domain. Career incentives in both spheres encourage

individuals to make rapid progress within constrained timelines (for academics—some of these on

limited term contracts—within the term of a specific grant; for public servants in a particular policy

team) and to move on. This is inimical not only to institutional memory (Tingle, 2015) but also to

the generation of trust that depends on continuity in relationships.

Such problems are compounded by heightened partisanship (Cohen, 2003) that tends to drive

policy discontinuity. Abrupt policy cycles make it more difficult to align research timelines and

implementation of evidence based initiatives, and tend to ‘disqualify’ researchers who have formed

policy relationships under the auspices of one government from continuing under another (see e.g.
Walter and Laing, 2018). One means of working around such impediments is for peak research

bodies (such as ASSA) to identify and to build relationships with relevant policy champions in the

bureaucracy, and for bureaucrats to alert researchers when a policy window emerges relevant to

their interests. The latter could be facilitated if APS departments themselves formally developed

research champion roles within their management teams. [Recommendation 6]

Ensuring continuing dialogue between the research and policy domains is also integral to

sustained relationships. We would stress the importance of roundtables or forums initiated by the

APS on policy issues of concern to the service. Should the introduction of departmental research

champions in the APS proceed, they could unite with research professionals in facilitating such

engagement. For its part, ASSA has sought to promote dialogue not only through its annual

symposia, but also through its workshop program; through policy roundtables under the aegis of its

Policy and Advocacy Committee; and through cooperative endeavours with the Institute of Public

Administration Australia (e.g. IPAA-ACT, 2018).

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3. Data Infrastructure

The APS would be enhanced by investment in research infrastructure. This submission particularly

highlights the necessity for a major investment in an integrated national data infrastructure for

humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS).

The Academy has in the past and continues today to advocate for investment in a HASS Data

Platform. It notes the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap explicitly identified need for

investment in national scale infrastructure which would support HASS research. This would

improve the ways researchers discover, access, curate, and analyse social and cultural data.

Researcher in HASS disciplines in Australia use a wide range of data in their researches. This data

is currently not integrated. Instead, it is dispersed throughout the public sector, organisations,
collecting institutions, and individual researchers and projects. Large amounts of the relevant data

is hidden in various ways, or lays in unstructured forms, including as texts, maps, audio

documents, and so on. Only a small fraction of these data relevant to HASS research exist in an

easily accessible, digital form. For this reason, even accessing the relevant materials presents

difficulties, before the hard work of interpretation and analysis can even begin.

The HASS infrastructure which already exists tends to be project-based or operate at an

institutional level. This is in part because of the fact funding has been limited and inconsistent,
which has caused much of the existing effort put into developing this infrastructure to be directed to

individual researcher and institution-level priorities. The result is overall uncoordinated activity,
small scale efforts, and minimal integration of research infrastructure.

Other countries, particularly the US and Europe, have taken a different tack: they have invested

heavily in data infrastructure and coordinated it at national levels, usually by publicly funded

national centres. Australian HASS research infrastructure is not up to these international

standards. There remains no national point of contact for international collaboration—indeed these

collaborations are often ad hoc and contingent. A national approach to planning and coordinating

is needed in this connection.

This submission proposes the development of HASS infrastructure in order to support the needs

and priorities of HASS research at a national scale.

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An Integrated Platform for HASS will:
 transform data discovery, access, mining, curation, retention, re-use, analysis
and interpretation through platform interoperability, integration, collaboration, and
coordination of tools
 exploit existing investment and build towards networked platforms and facilities
through a staged process
 drive efficiency, productivity, and quality across disciplines by enabling data
comparability and a coordinated approach to metadata standards, data
management standards, and shared protocols (including licences)
 promote innovation in research practice across HASS and into other domains
through skills and workforce development
 build strategic connections with other areas of the 2016 National Research
Infrastructure Roadmap
 support research outputs which are findable, accessible, interoperable and
reusable
 ensure accessibility of data, with open data where possible but with strong
protocols for data protection and security where required
 provide a coordinated approach to international engagement, in order to optimise
the benefits of international memberships and partnerships.

An Integrated HASS Platform will maximise the value of existing Commonwealth investments in

data, the digital transformation agenda, and the advantages of the big data revolution. It is not only

academics and researchers who would benefit from enhanced HASS platforms. Other

beneficiaries include government agencies of many kinds, business, industry—including creative

industries, ICT, life sciences and health—not-for-profits, community organisations, and the public

at large. This submission emphasises the following crucial point: APS in particular would be a

major beneficiary of improved investment in an integrated HASS Data Platform, and enhancement

of HASS infrastructure goes hand in hand with enhancement of the APS.

This submission notes the limited recognition of the social sciences in the government’s response

to the infrastructure framework report. It therefore recommends the establishment of a

comprehensive integrated HASS Data Platform, in order to drive transformations in the way

researchers discover, access, curate, and analyse social and cultural data1. [Recommendation 8]

1
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia recognises the input of the Australian Academy of the

Humanities, with whom the points made in section four of this submission were formulated, as part of a

proposal put to the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap. Material from section four is derived from a

previous Academy submission (ASSA, 2017b, pp. 8-11)

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4. General Reflections

We here elaborate on the arguments above by drawing attention to a series of questions that were

generated in discussion at a recent inter sectoral ASSA workshop. They were proposed as issues

for further consideration by both researchers and policy professionals. However, we see them as

especially relevant in the context of the current APS review. They might be directed to participants

in the review’s consultation process.

The Policy Reform Challenge

In relation to policy thinking, a leading issue is the idea settings within which policy is conceived. In

times of policy equilibrium, when parameters are agreed, attention tends to focus on short term,
tactical issues. It now seems that the ‘big ideas’ that have constituted policy orthodoxy for the past

thirty years have run their course as even champions of the reforms of the past 30 years, such as

Paul Keating, now concede (see Bramston 2017). We are arguably at the end of a policy cycle

where what had become the norm – deregulation and market ‘solutions’ to societal problems – is in

question.

This shift is behind the demand for inter-sectoral and inter-governmental engagement and for fresh

approaches to long-term strategic thinking. Practitioners and academics have a responsibility to

address these problems, that is, to conceive and refine the ideas necessary for the next policy

phase:
 What institutional settings need to change to promote inter-sectoral and inter-governmental
engagement and minimise the mismatch between those settings and complex policy
challenges?
 How can we get big ideas into the policy process, while engaging both practitioners and
academics?
 How can we shift the focus from tactics and political risk management to policy
development?
 How can public servants be given more reflective time to assist them to move from day to
day imperatives to thinking over the horizon?

The Capacity Building Challenge

On the supply side (policy generation), the public service must pay close attention to the costs and

benefits of outsourcing, its impact on policy capacity, on institutional memory and the means of

honing its message in the competition for government attention (Kirkpatrick et al., 2018; Tingle,
2015) [Recommendation 7]. And, as noted, researchers wishing to have impact need to identify

and to build relationships with champions in the public sector, and to learn to speak to the needs of

Page 12 of 18
the policy community rather than assuming that ‘evidence’ speaks for itself.

Capacity will be enhanced by more inter-sectoral co-operation. The tasks of practitioners and

researchers working together might include the following:
 What is the best way to ensure the public sector (public servants and politicians) has the
relevant skills and the collaborative competencies to create partnerships to deal with
relationship across sectors?
 How can the gap between the rhetoric around public access to administrative data and its
lack of availability in reality be bridged?
 How can the policy/implementation gap be improved both in terms of organizational
arrangements and other ways of gaining maximum connection (including from outside in
and inside out)?
 How can the public services do better with their evaluations so that the longer term benefits
of complex initiatives are given time to be seen and so that collective learning can occur?
 How can we create governance architectures that balance control and flexibility?
 How can institutional memory best be preserved and harnessed?

The Legitimacy and Engagement Challenge

On the demand side of the policy equation, there is little researchers and practitioners can do to

recalibrate the ‘professional’ career paths into politics, or to spark the institutional reform of parties.
However, the historical and organisational factors that have led to the current deterioration of trust

in and respect for politicians and parties can be identified, brought to the attention of political

leaders and publicly disseminated as a possible influence on practice. Both parties and

parliaments should consider how the skills politicians need as policy advocates, managers and

implementers can be developed and encouraged—researchers and policy professionals should

seek to be catalysts for such developments.

The causes of contemporary devaluation of experts and expertise need to be understood and

addressed if credence is to be given to evidence based policy. The gulf between ‘official

knowledge’ (the effectiveness of past reforms) and vernacular experience (the public trust deficit in

relation to politics and policy) is testament to the failure of the policy community to engage

sufficiently on the community level (Davies, 2017).

Further, it is evident that good policy needs not just an evidence base, but also a values base. The

explication and implementation of policy must convey not only the problem it will address and the

evidence on which it relies, but also the values it seeks to realise:

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 How is the utilisation of experts and evidence in the public policy process to be managed
and articulated alongside deeply seated values?
 How can public servants be encouraged to drive participatory democracy and community
engagement in an environment of a sense of public disempowerment?
 How can the bureaucracy be encouraged to move from the transactional to the
participatory way of dealing with key stakeholders, especially in a cost constrained
environment?
 What creative ways can be pursued, and by what organisations, to promote dialogue
across and more widely outside the public service on alternative policy options (role of
dialogue, brokering)?
 Can the key elements of experimentalist governance be more systematized across the
public service, especially in a risk averse political climate?
 Which non-government organisations are best able to work on these issues with officials –
what might we demand of bodies such as ASSA, ANZSOG, IPAA and APSA?

Page 14 of 18
5. Conclusion and Recommendations

In the light of what has been said, this submission makes the following eight particular

recommendations:

  1. Given a series of earlier reviews of the APS, the review panel should assess the extent to
    which the recommendations of these previous exercises in self-reflection have been
    implemented, and the reasons for both successes and failures.
  2. Researchers perceive the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) as currently lacking
    the support systems and the strategic focus, including a relevant research base, needed to
    address the challenging tasks that the country requires. We recommend that COAG
    structures, processes, and advisory capacity be augmented to give it more independence
    of the Commonwealth government, and the administrative heft to match the importance of
    its role.
  3. There should be consideration of how to promote inter-sectoral research-policy co-
    operation, and better understanding on each side of the imperatives to which the other
    must respond. This could be the catalyst for jointly-created and broad-based intellectual
    eco-systems, and ‘encompassing groups’ to serve as advocacy coalitions for practical
    policy development. We suggest (a) the secondment of relevant research experts to
    particular departmental policy teams for specific projects; and (b) the short-term
    secondment of individuals from within the APS to identified research teams within
    Universities for a period.
  4. The ANZSOG model—currently oriented towards academics training public servants in
    institutional and organizational dynamics and policy case studies—should be extended to
    offering training to academics in how to engage with policy agencies.
  5. APS departments should maintain an updated register of immediate priorities and
    emergent issues in their domains with which researchers could match their research
    interests.
  6. APS departments should introduce ‘research champion’ roles within their management
    teams. Such research champions should (a) identify and develop relationships with
    relevant external experts; and (b) initiate roundtables or forums for the APS on policy
    issues of concern to the service, in collaboration with external research professionals.
  7. The APS must pay close attention to the costs and benefits of outsourcing, its impact on
    policy capacity, on institutional memory and the means of honing its message in the
    competition for government attention.
  8. The government should establish of a comprehensive integrated HASS Data
    Platform, in order to drive transformations in the way researchers discover,

Page 15 of 18
access, curate, and analyse social and cultural data.

Finally, the Academy adds the general recommendation that overall funding for social

sciences education and research must match or exceed world standards if the contribution

to public service capability and performance is to be sustained and enhanced. Current per

student and per researcher support is limiting this pay-off. As indicated in the introduction,
the social sciences play a distinctive role in support of the APS.

About the Academy

The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia promotes excellence in the social sciences in

Australia, and in their contribution to public policy. It coordinates the promotion of research,
teaching, and advice in the social sciences, promotes national and international scholarly

cooperation across disciplines and sectors, comments on national needs and priorities in the social

sciences, and provides advice to government on issues of national importance.

The Academy is an independent, interdisciplinary body of elected Fellows. Fellows are elected by

their peers for their distinguished achievements and exceptional contributions made to the social

sciences. It is an autonomous, non-governmental organisation, devoted to the advancement of

knowledge and research in the various social sciences.

The Academy is available at any time to further discuss this submission.

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia

26 Balmain Crescent, Acton ACT 2601

GPO Box 1956, Canberra ACT 2601

P: +61 2 6249 1788

Dylan.Clements@assa.edu.au

Page 16 of 18
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