Governing the City State - Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate ...

This form of Committee meeting would be a “new and innovative approach to informationsharing, discussion and policy development, and … collaborative rather than adversarial intheir conduct and processes”. They would be supported by amendments to the AssemblyStanding Orders “as necessary to provide for meetings to take place in the collaborative role,requiring all participants to engage collaboratively, not adversarially”. 46Given the ingrained traditions of properly robust, sometimes adversarial, accountabilityprocesses in Australian Parliaments, and the Assembly in particular, it is most unlikelyamendments to the Standing Orders alone could drive the sort of behavioural change andinnovative work practices described in this part of the Parliamentary Agreement.Furthermore, the formality of committee hearings in a unicameral parliament, includingtranscription of proceedings by Hansard, is arguably inconsistent with the articulated aims ofthese proposed procedures as well as with established conventions supporting the work of theCabinet, the operation of Executive Privilege and, indeed, Parliamentary Privilege.Those aims are, nevertheless, worth pursuing, and it may be possible for the Government andthe Assembly to reach an alternative accommodation that brings non-government Membersinto the policy and program design process sooner than is currently the case. This might besuccessfully achieved in the context of broader engagement with the community within thePublic Value Management approach that is discussed in more detail below. In any event,such procedures would always need to remain explicitly subject to the Latimer HousePrinciples and established Westminster conventions buttressing the work of the Cabinet.The Review notes the first report on implementation of the Latimer House Principles in theACT is in preparation.Challenges Confronting the ACTPSMany of the issues facing the ACT Government, presenting challenges for the ACTPS anddriving the need for innovation are being faced by governments around Australia and theworld. The Sunningdale Institute attached to the United Kingdom’s National School ofGovernment, for example, argues that current ecological, political, economic and socialforces in combination demand a “Copernican revolution in the basic paradigms forgovernance and public service” central to which are new paradigms that “include thinkingabout government and public services as ‘complex adaptive systems’ and organisms, ratherthan as machines or physical structures (e.g. ‘levers’ or ‘silos’)”. 4746 Parliamentary Agreement. Appendix 1, Clauses 2.3 & 2.5.47 Sunningdale Institute (2009) “Whole systems go!” Improving leadership across the whole public service system. NationalSchool of Government, Sunningdale, p.1Governing the City State: 57