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

supporting their governments and serving their communities. The Victorian State ServicesAuthority argues, for example, that:As politicians seek improvement in public services in the face of an increasingly complexworld, the concept of agility can provide a useful and coherent way to discuss newapproaches such as personalising public services to the needs of individual citizens, orencouraging government departments to join up policy, services and budgets to solvecomplex problems. 53In an environment where the ACTPS is challenged to do more with less, where expectationsof service delivery are high, and where there is a desire among the citizenry to be genuinelyengaged in participatory decision making processes, a focus on agility has much to offer.Increasing the agility of the ACTPS will create opportunities to improve performance,enhance service delivery, and facilitate achievement of the Government’s priorities:Agile government has the capacity to understand and meet the public’s needs in the shortterm, adapt to trends and issues in the medium term, and shape public needs over the longterm. It recognises the imperatives for ongoing reform and adaptation to deliver governmentpolicy, regulation, enforcement, and services that continue to meet and anticipate societalneeds. Agility is important because it equips government to address complex problems in anuncertain environment. 54That is not to say, however, that agile government is easy, or that simply saying the ACTPSneeds to be more agile is enough. As a framework for broader cultural change, differentways of working, and enhancement of systems and processes, agility has something to offer,but its successes are predicated on there being a clear and shared understanding of thegovernment of the day’s priorities and purpose. Agility without agreed strategic directionand a shared sense of purpose linked to the activities that will be undertaken can look a lotlike reactiveness to the issues raised by “the last person who spoke to the Minister”. Agilitydepends on systems being in place that capture and collate information about emerging issuesand trends and facilitate a flexible response to them without losing sight of the government’sstrategic direction.Agile government creates challenges that go to the heart of accountability arrangementsbetween officials and their Ministers, and between the Executive and Legislature:Policy makers at the heart of government will need to become much more comfortable withthe idea of innovation being driven by frontline workers – central agencies need to becometalent spotters for new ideas and initiatives or risk becoming bottlenecks. Joining upgovernment around outcomes will require a significant investment of political and managerialleadership to break down entrenched barriers. Effective shaping of the future environmentwill often require public sector leaders to take an unfashionably long view of policyproblems. 55In theory, it should be logical to argue that a city state with a unicameral parliament, andservice delivery responsibilities which fall across two tiers of government elsewhere in53 State Services Authority (2008) Towards Agile Government. Victorian Government, Melbourne, pp.1-2.54 State Services Authority (2008) p.5.55 State Services Authority (2008) p.2.Governing the City State: 60