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Advising Australian Federal Governments: Assessing the Evolving Capacity and Role of the Australian Public Service
Author(s) -
Tiernan Anne
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8500.2011.00742.x
Subject(s) - commonwealth , public administration , government (linguistics) , preparedness , corporate governance , public service , public policy , service (business) , political science , empirical evidence , public relations , business , economics , management , law , marketing , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology
Internationally, there have been persistent complaints that the policy capacity of governments has declined. This critique is widely accepted, including in Australia, but for the most part, such claims are assertions, made without reference to empirical evidence and data. This introduction to the Special Issue examining the Policy Advisory Capacity of the Australian Public Service considers these assertions and proposes an approach and methodology to test the discourse of declining policy capacity in Australian federal government. It introduces six case studies from across the spectrum of the Commonwealth government's responsibilities. The Special Issue concludes with an article by Evert Lindquist and Anne Tiernan assessing the ability of the APS to support decision‐making through its policy advising functions and its preparedness to meet the challenges of 21st century governance.