I wrote a piece recently looking at an OECD report that proffered six attributes of future public servants in a world that is becoming more connected, complex and (sometimes) confusing. These were the six -iteration, data literacy, user centricity, curiosity, storytelling and (a personal favourite) insurgency. This time I’m looking at a couple of linked […]
More on the talent question: skills for the future public service
If there is a talent crisis in the public sector, which I think there is and about which I wrote something in a recent post you can find here, the question is begged what is the mix of talent that the public service of the future needs? It turns out that there’s a fair bit […]
Do bureaucrats care? A take on talent in the public sector
I’ve been interested in the question of talent in the public sector for some time. I think there’s something of a talent crisis across the sector, not because there isn’t enough of it or the right mix (although there are real challenges on both those fronts I suspect), but because I suspect we don’t use […]
Design, policy and democracy
This week I attended the OpenState event in Adelaide and ran a session exploring the relationship between design, policy and democracy. These are the slides I used to frame the conversation. The session was a bit of an experiment to test an idea that emerged from putting a few pieces of my professional life together […]
Place matters
I was the moderator for a one-day forum this week held by the newly re-established Institute of Public Administration Australia Queensland division about the important of place in tackling complex social disadvantage. These are my “headlines” from a day of energetic and wide-ranging conversations: 1 The thing that turns connected communities into flourishing places is […]
We have to talk about the Web
“Web Science” is probably an unfamiliar phrase for some. Obscure even. As someone once remarked, the only problem with the phrase “Web Sciences” is the word “web”, the word “science” and the way the two words are used together. Which is a bit tricky, because the conversation which those two words signify is becoming more […]
