PUBLIC SERVICE CRAFT AND THE SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN MEAN

Public servants hold a privileged place in our society. By convention, they have the opportunity to influence ‘the room where it happens’ in a way no other Australian can.

Unlike the ministers they serve, public servants are not elected. The policy advice they provide is rarely open to external scrutiny. Yet this advice can sway, and sometimes determine, ministerial decisions affecting the wellbeing of Australians.

The quality of policy advice provided by the public service matters. This is recognised by the Australian Public Service Commission which sets a high bar. Policy advice should not just be good; it should be great. Sounds comforting, doesn’t it.

The Robodebt Royal Commission found that the advice government received from the public service failed its own quality standard. Not by a little; by a lot.

Robodebt raises some important questions for the public service. One involves how it judges the quality of its own advice. Another is whether the Jedi-like notion of public service craft is enough to guarantee great policy.

Exploring these questions requires us to go further into the byzantine halls around the room where it happens. Take a compass, and possibly some disinfectant, you might need them.

Government decision making 

Government decision-making is an intensely human endeavour. It may look technocratic, but it is not. Democracy involves contest and parliament attracts people with strong beliefs, ambition, and personalities. Politics and policy jostle for supremacy. Every government has one eye, at least, firmly on the next election.

These complexities mean that decision-making is more often like Utopia the television series than the rational island of Utopia described by Thomas More.

Contest is critical to the proper functioning of democracy. From the outside, the primary contest appears to be between those in government and those not. But, as those with experience in the room where it happens know, contest within an elected government can be just as fierce. Ministers may share a broad ideological base, but the priorities, philosophies and ambitions of individual ministers differ - often greatly.

Providing independent advice in this environment is a delicate and nuanced task. Those operating in the room where it happens must possess a chameleon-like ability to work effectively with ministers of different governments, and different ministers within the same government.

Nothing guarantees that public service policy advice will be listened to, even by the most welcoming of governments. Influence relies on more than the quality of advice or the strength of the policy process. Influence also depends - sometimes critically - on the relationships formed between public servants, ministers and, increasingly, ministerial advisers.

Public servants are rightly expected to develop effective relationships with the elected minister/s they serve. Those without effective relationships, can find the door to the room where it happens firmly closed. Closed doors between ministers and public servants are not a path to good government.

Poor relationships between public servants and ministers are highly visible within the byzantine halls of power. Where they exist, it is the public service which must yield. Maintaining good relationships therefore has a premium. For individual public servants, it can be the difference between advancing (or staying) up the greasy pole or not.

Unlike poor relationships, poor advice is less often open to scrutiny, is harder to identify, and generally has fewer career consequences for those providing it. It is a dangerous combination.

Creating and maintaining effective relationships with ministers at the same time as providing great advice is perhaps the most important part of public service craft. The closer you are to the room where it happens, the more important effective relationships are, and the more significant craft becomes. Those who do it well fully deserve the funky Jedi robes proposed in Part 1. 

Craft in practice

Only the most naïve would suggest that craft-based decisions on the content, timing and form of public service advice are made entirely independently from relationship considerations. Great policy advice is not an absolute. It is necessarily contextual.

Aristotle (yes, the bearded homonym himself) would argue that it is a question of finding the golden mean between excess and deficiency. It is, he might say, a question of balance between advice being ‘useful’ to the government and advice being ‘independent’ from the government.

An excess of usefulness occurs when public service advice is simply designed to please the minister or government of the day. The advice is useful, but excessively so, because it embodies no independent assessment of the policy being considered or the alternatives available. Here, the public servant’s role is diminished to zero.

A deficiency of usefulness occurs when advice reflects what public servants thinks is great policy without connecting this to the philosophy and priorities of the minister or government. Such advice is independent but is not useful. In this case, the public service seeks to usurp the role of an elected minister.

For some, the deficiency of usefulness described above is seen as a virtue rather than a flaw. Unfettered independence is fine outside the public service, but not inside. Public servants are exactly that: servants. Their role is to serve the elected government and through them the public. Public service advice that is entirely disconnected from the views and aspirations of elected ministers (and the government as a whole) can never be considered ‘great’.

Finding Aristotle’s golden mean is always hard. But four issues add to the challenge for public servants. One is the natural power imbalance inherent in the relationship between ministers and public servants. A second is that decisions on policy appropriately rest with the elected government.  Another is the temptation for the personal views and ambitions of individual public servants to interfere with their independent judgement. A fourth is that the speed at which government operates can deny the reflective time needed to develop great policy.

These issues create a bias which can result in the public service view of great policy advice becoming too malleable. Instead of great policy, the public service can end up promoting ok policy (ok is still, well, ok). But it can also find itself, as happened in Robodebt, conceiving policy that is unquestionably poor.

At this point, Aristotle would likely stroke his luxuriant beard before shuffling off for an Ouzo and a good think. Well, at least he might have had that most Greek of drinks had been invented 2000 years earlier.

Formal Guidance

Craft is complemented by a degree of formal guidance. Cabinet Handbooks provide technical advice on the drafting of submissions, including who must be consulted. Training adds to this, providing a basic skill base on which craft can be built.

Perhaps the most important source of guidance is provided by the APS (and state service) values.

The APS values are not directed specifically towards policy advice. They establish a broader set of behavioural expectations for individual public servants and the service as a whole. But what they say is clearly relevant.

A key value refers to “impartiality”. Advice must be apolitical, frank, and honest (independent). It must also be timely and, importantly, based on the best available evidence. In providing advice, public servants must act ethically.

Curating and understanding the evidence base is particularly important. Bringing an independent view of what the evidence is, and what it means, is a major reason public service advice is seen as critical to good government. But evidence, while important, is never enough to guarantee great public policy.

Another value, that of “commitment to service”, provides further guidance. It requires the public service to focus on achieving the “best results for the Australian community and the government”.

They are all nice words. But they only have meaning if they translate effectively into operational reality.

Policy process 

Under the Public Service Act, departmental secretaries are responsible for upholding the APS values and for being the principal adviser to a minister/s. It is, however, patently unrealistic for secretaries to oversight every piece of policy advice a department provides. As a consequence, responsibility for most advice is generally delegated to other senior executives 

While policy advice tends to be authorised by a single person, it is mostly developed via processes and traditions that are designed to bring the collective wisdom of the public service together. The purpose of these processes is to ensure ministers receive great policy advice.

Often public service processes do a sound job. They provide an important support to the wielders of craft. But they are not infallible and in the case of Robodebt these too failed.

Where to from here

Everything would be easy if great policy could be algorithmically determined, or machine learned. Public servants could just switch on the old AI unit, ask it to examine the available evidence, and slope off for a coffee. Alas, they cannot. Not yet anyway.

Judging the quality of public service advice is inherently difficult. Great policy advice is not simply in the eye of the beholder, but nor can it be assessed out of the context in which it is provided. 

The fact that something is hard to measure, does not make it less important. There is a general feeling from those with experience of the room where it happens that the public service has lost some policy advising skill. On the evidence provided by the Robodebt Royal Commission, they may well be right.

Craft, while important, may be not enough. It is too easy for public servant Jedis to misplace their independent policy compass. Something more is needed to help them. The big question is – what?