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

Canberra 2030 – Time to TalkCanberra 2030 – Time to Talk – “an in-depth conversation with the Canberra communityabout the kind of city we want to live in by 2030” 88 – was underway during the course of theReview, and a public report was released on 24 January 2011. In launching the process, theChief Minister stated the focus of Time to Talk would be on “urban form in all its facets -population, sustainable transport, addressing climate change, housing, planning and openspace - and the challenges we will collectively confront as we build a better city for thefuture”. 89 The objective of the program was to inform government policy and assist inensuring integration between land use, transport and environmental planning. Thisengagement program is a key element of the ACT Government’s evaluation of theCanberra Spatial Plan 90 which, in turn, is pivotal in setting out how the ACT will achieveCOAG’s agreed strategic planning principles for major Australian cities.In this sense, Time to Talk builds on the successes of the Canberra 2020 Summit held in April912008 and lays a foundation for deeper processes of co-production and participatory decisionmaking in the future.Doing Whole of Government in the ACTDiscussions about joined up government, whole of government approaches, and collaborativepolicy development are not new, nor are they earth shattering. Experience in the ACT,around Australia, and overseas, however, demonstrates they are hard to achieve. Bureaucratstraditionally are very good at working within their silos (which are constrained byappropriation frameworks), and are sometimes more interested in turf protection thanworking together. Citizens rightly expect more of their public services. The CommonwealthGovernment’s Management Advisory Committee argued in 2004:whole of government is the public administration of the future. It offers links andconnections to the global community of ideas, knowledge and understanding essentialfor the APS to face the governance challenges of the 21st century. It extols teambasedapproaches to solving the wicked problems that are endemic to public policy. 92Whole of government thinking and working relies on officials being prepared to crossportfolio boundaries in pursuit of a clearly articulated government priority. 93 The sameapproaches apply regardless of what those boundaries are called – even within a singleagency, there is a risk of silos between divisions just as there can be between agencies. It isthrough skills development, cultural change, embedding new ways of working, and thecreation of institutional imperatives that the benefits of this way of working are unlocked.88 Stanhope, J. MLA (2010a) Time to Talk About the City We Want to Be in 2030”http://www.chiefminister.act.gov.au/media.php?v=9899&m=51&s=389 Stanhope, J. MLA (2010a)90 See http://apps.actpla.act.gov.au/spatialplan/index.html91 See http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/113588/canb2020-summit-summary.pdf92 Management Advisory Committee (2004b) Connecting Government: Whole of Government Responses to Australia’s PolicyChallenges. Good Practice Guides. Commonwealth Government, Canberra, p.vi.93 Management Advisory Committee (2004a) p.4.Governing the City State: 70