In a shift from traditional top-down government, leaders are calling for agencies to tap the expertise and insights from communities to solve complex problems.
After years of paying lip service to citizen engagement, government leaders are finally taking seriously the need to tap community expertise, understand their issues, co-design solutions and partner in delivery of services.would be two of the tent poles of the new government’s public sector reform program.
For more than two decades, blogs, smartphones and social media have empowered citizens and given them a direct voice to be active participants as consumers of public services, or in the development of policy and regulation.But public sector leaders, wary of the sometimes cantankerous world of modern media, have struggled to develop their own professional identities and in turn have clamped their agencies’ ability to actively and authentically work with their communities.
Scott was a former journalist so had the training and DNA to be confident about what to say and when to engage, but showed that being an engaged public leader did not mean having to spill cabinet secrets, nor be an exercise in self-promotion.Agencies such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Electoral Commission have also shown the way, with strong and meaningful social media engagement during last year’s census and May’s federal election.
The historic reluctance to engage is deeply cultural and reflects the insularity that has dogged Canberra’s biggest agencies, but also a comfort to many agencies that deal with public affairs managers and industry lobbyists. Dealing with the public is often noisy and chaotic, meaning officials typically bias to engaging with similarly trained regulatory professionals.
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