TOPIC 3.5: Managing outwards – changing core business

Government increasingly is seeking cross sector arrangements to:

• improve service quality through greater diversity and contestability
• focus on outcomes
• get more from public assets over their life cycle
• access private sector management skills and expertise
• engage citizens and civic groups in governance and monitoring.

There are many different forms of the ‘blending of the sectors’ – for example:

• Personnel – the movement of people between the sectors.
• Service delivery – banks delivering guaranteed loans … cabin attendants enforcing safety regulations.
• Finance – the use of private financing for public programs, as well as some use of public funds to assist private enterprise, including indirect support (e.g. loan guarantees, tax waivers).
• Policy leverage – government encouraging private activity through incentives.
• Regulation (and deregulation) – when not directly participating in the market, government exerts a powerful influence through its regulatory role.
• Objectives pursued – closely correlated objectives, the best example being economic growth.

An interesting point of public–private convergence lies in the operation and accountability of government business enterprises (GBEs). These entities put government in the role of shareholder with a high stake in the business’s economic performance while remaining accountable to the wider public interest.

The blurred activity between the sectors has changed notions of the ‘core business’ of government and heightened the need to manage ‘at the interface’ that is to manage relationships across organisational, industry and community boundaries, or, to manage outwards in a networked government.

Collaboration across government, in response to common service demands and shared client groups, is referred to as a ‘whole-of-government approach’ or ‘joined up’ government or ‘connecting government’.