 Introduce Sue Chapman now as the next speaker. Sue is the Deputy Director-General of the Community Services Directorate and so she'll be able to give you a perspective from a line agency. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you Julie for taking my slot because in my diary I was here to be here at 10.30, not at 10 o'clock and I was actually chairing a meeting so thank you very much for doing that. I was hoping there was somebody else here. Thank you for the invitation and the topic is the perspective from a line agency. I'm from Community Services Directorate and I've been involved in line agencies in other jurisdictions. I worked in the public health system in New South Wales at the Ilawera Area Health Service. I worked for the infamous docks in New South Wales earlier in my career and I've also worked in policy agencies as well so I guess I've got a bit of perspective from both sides. The other thing that I've been involved with which lots of you of course are have been working in the not-for-profit sector or NGOs and for a while I was on the Lake Ilawera Authority as a community representative which involved me and my colleagues, there were ten of us, academics, council members and so on, arguing the toss with the New South Wales State Government about how Lake Ilawera could be improved and trying to get money for that. So I had to find out quite quickly how as a community person I could influence decisions in the government of the day. So I've got a range of perspectives. I guess the thing that I wanted to start with though is in a line agency as a bureaucrat we have responsibilities to the government. The government of the day sets the policy. That's why they were elected. They're there to run in this case the territory. And even if you didn't personally vote for who's in power you voted in a democratic process to have a government to make decisions for the greater good, for the public good. And so our role as a line agency is to deliver on the policy and on the decisions the government makes. Now that doesn't mean to say that we sit in splendid isolation and wait for something to come over the parapet from the government and they say here you are could you do something with that please. We're heavily involved in informing policy decisions. And so one of our important roles in this is to actually work in our service system across the whole of the service system which is government parts of the service system, non-government parts of the service system and private parts of the service system if they exist in that particular service system. So one of the really important things as a line agency that we need to do is to work with and across all of the government so across all of the directorates that we have anything to do with in relation to that service system and with the sector and that's the people sitting in this room. People say to me sometimes yes but the power relationship is different. You have all the power because you hold the money. And the reality is very often we do because we fund services that the government wants to have delivered. But in order to get good policy and to make the best decisions that are possible it behoves us to involve all of the people who actually have to make it work on the ground. So our way of informing policy is to get in really early in the front end when somebody's having a good idea when we can. We try to do that. We say the same thing to you. If you've got an idea involve us early because we can talk about how it might be able to be happening. But we say to our policy partners well that's a fabulous idea but if you go down this particular path it's probably going to be impossible to implement or it's going to be very expensive to implement or you're not going to get the outcomes that you want. Or it's a fabulous idea and we're right there with you. So the debate that has to happen in terms of the development of policy involves not just people sitting in you know rooms thinking up policy ideas and doing some research and then plonking down a cabinet submission. It's actually talking through at the very beginning how would we implement this to achieve the outcomes that that policy setting is all about. And so part of our role is to bring your views and your experience as Julie says your lived experience into that discussion and we need to find ways to do that. The interesting thing for me is that often when we're having those conversations we appear to be at total odds. It's like everybody's in there having a fight you know it's my way or the highway or I want to win. Julie's concept of balancing can I say I loved her slides. I mean I don't have any she's hers were really good. But the concept of balancing competing priorities competing stakeholders competing expectations and all of those kinds of things often means that people see the outcome through a lens that says there's a winner or there's a loser. Now governments are about the public good they're there for the whole population they might deep dive occasionally to look at a particular subset of that population to do something specific because maybe they've been left behind by other policies or whatever. And I mean the NDIS is a classic example of getting really focused on a particular demographic in our in our community and really focusing on that and doing a huge amount of work in that space. But there's a big lot of them it's not about a bunch of individuals it's about the group of people whose lives can be improved overall if we do something with the policy settings that are there. What I wanted to say was if we're actually going to be able to inform policy development and deliver good quality efficacious service on the ground to the communities and people that we serve we should be starting from the point of view that we all agree on one thing. And the one thing in my view working having worked across a range of service delivery agencies is that we're all working in human services and those kinds of services because we actually want to make a difference to the population that we serve. So that's why I'm in human services. That's why I think most of you are. That's why my colleagues are in line agency land in service delivery land. We want to make a difference. So if we agree that our starting point is always to do something that's going to improve outcomes for that group of people. We're halfway along the discussion I think. So one of the things that I'd say from my observations and now I'm really old I have lots and I could bore you witless with them but I'll stick to the time is that in any work that we do in these kinds of policy and service delivery continuums in the human services area the success of it of whatever the outcome is will be based on how good is our relationship because it is based on relationships. We can talk about process of which there's huge numbers and I'll talk briefly about that in a minute and there are rules and at the end of the day we are public servants that's our part of the service system and we have responsibilities that we need to meet which you might go oh for God's sake get a grip. Well that's just how it is as a public servant and you have responsibilities in your areas to your boards or to the volunteers you work with or the and the clients that you deal with but at the end of the day if we have a good relationship and things get a bit tough and we have to make difficult decisions based on data and evidence and your or my or somebody else's fabulous idea that they really really love and really wanted to get up doesn't get up it shouldn't damage the relationship and it shouldn't mean that we can't continue to have discussions about other things so one of the one of the things that I think is really important from a service line agent service delivery line agency point of view is maintaining developing and maintaining relationships with people so that if I have to say no I'm sorry that's not going to happen for these reasons or for no reason sometimes because there might be some secret cabinet thing happening that I'm allowed to tell anybody about I would hope that you would trust me to say well she just didn't say that because she could you know just decided to say no today there's usually a good reason for it behind behind the no or if I say well that's a fantastically good idea I think we could work it up but it might need to look like this or it might need to fit into this other thing that's moving along there's a good reason for that too so the relationship and and one that's based on trust and recognizing that even friendships sometimes have sticky periods where you don't want to have a cup of tea with them because they're really annoying you that's okay because that's like being an adult the thing that I would say about getting a decision idea up is camera cracks me up I mean I come from New South Wales and I'm forever struck about really how small camber is because everybody knows everybody as my staff say there's always a backstory Sue and you just need to know before you go out and start shooting off your mouth you bump into your local member or minister in the IGA every other day or as I did when I was doing my laps at Dixon pool in summer I came up at the end and there was a minister looking at me in the end of my lane you know I'm looking really attractive in my goggles and the hat hi minister I'm not sure what you're supposed to call them is minister when you're in the pool at Dixon but anyway that's a fantastic thing in many respects it's a really great thing because you get to hear really like immediately stuff when I worked for the Department of Human Services as a federal public servant I was in this fabulously isolated glass tower out at Tugranong I never saw anybody I never went to lunch I never knew anything about anything and I was working on all of this stuff that was about family policy families policy you hope it has an impact somewhere you'd like to think it would and if you ever actually saw a real person you might be able to ask them in Canberra you can do that every day now that often means there's the squeaky wheel or the person who decisions shops you know I didn't like the answer from that particular part of the organization or the particular director I think I'll go and have a go down here the bottom line is if you in the community want something to be put on the agenda or you're concerned about something or you want something changed or whatever it happens to be it will always get back to the minister with the portfolio so even if it's a local member down at the IGA if they think it's something that should be raised it'll end up with portfolio minister and in our case we have four so you know we know all the ministers just about including the Treasurer and he's an important person to know they that person that member of parliament or that other minister will say to my minister if it's say it's in community services as an example what do you think about this idea or this was raised with me and could you get somebody to have a look at it it will always come back to the directorate to provide advice to the minister it is very rare probably not unheard of but really rare for a minister on the basis of a conversation at the pool at Dixon with a constituent will come back into the assembly next week and propose a new policy setting usually doesn't happen like that it will be minister will say this give us some thoughts on this give us some options where does this feed how might this work bloody blah and there's a conversation so we're always in the mix as the public servants so if you have a you know the light bulb moment or that your pet thing that you think this this could actually make a really big difference in what we're doing but it will mean certain things get changed it might be a legislative change or it might be a reshaping of a program that you funded for in a particular way now to turn it into something else but it's going to get a better outcome talk to us talk to the line agencies or talk to policy agencies as well and say this is what we're thinking where might this fit in that bigger context that we're working in it's important for us to have those conversations so we understand what it is you are trying to achieve and where you think there could be a better outcome for the for the money that we have the other thing that I'd say just speaking of money is in this isn't is a much of it about the pie is not getting exponentially bigger the pie is probably getting smaller and if you look at what's happening with the Commonwealth we're going to have big impacts probably in the ACT because of that so one of the ways of actually getting a good idea up or changing direction is to say I don't want more money for it I want to use this funding that you've given me in a different way for these reasons based on this evidence and so on and that's the same thing we have to do if we think a particular policy setting a particular program a particular whatever isn't actually delivering the outcomes we want we need to argue that way ourselves back to our minister and back to the government process is the same either way I think the other thing that it's always really important to remember is ministers and members of the assembly and ministers and their advisers they're the politics they're the politicians and the political advisers ministers will get their advisers from time to time to do some research on something often they ask us but they can do that but that has a political slant that isn't my business my business is to look at the policy that the government has set and make sure we can deliver on it to get the outcomes we want within budget in a timely way and so on and so forth so there are two parts to any service delivery or policy debate there's the political part and then there's the policy bureaucratic part good segue into bureaucracy I know that people in the sector have said you know there's too much bureaucracy and we have to fill out too many forms and we have to report too often and the things don't make sense and it's an annoyance and it costs us a lot of money and you know all of those things now Robert's doing great work in trying to improve that for you but one of the things that I would say is because we are in government and we are spending the public purse we are accountable to the public for the what we've done with their money and so the levels of transparency and accountability we have are actually much higher than they probably are anywhere else in any organisation whether it's blue scope and a small non-government or whatever we have scrutiny like you cannot believe and so everything we do has to you know has to fit we have to report in a particular way we have to be very very very clear about what it is we're doing and how we're doing it with whom we're doing it and what the outcomes are so sometimes we have to get you to give us information because we've bought the service from you you're delivering it on our behalf but we have to report in that way where we can strip it out we will but at the end of the day there are some things that are not strip outable and the other thing is because we get a lot of our revenue from the commonwealth the territory does we are actually beholden to them as well and they have a series of expectations about what data will provide and so on which again we might have to get from you to give to them because they give us money so having to have the conversation about how we could make it simpler or more effective but understand that at some at some point there's a place we can't go because of the rules of working in the environment we're working I guess the only other thing that I'd say is the importance of data and evidence in service delivery we see you see I see immediately the impact of some of the stuff that we do now it's not enough to write a proposal based on some anecdotes that you know somebody said and Mary Smith her mum had this experience that's not evidence based policy setting or service delivery modification it's that's not going to work we need evidence we need to get people to give us real live data that says something about the topic or the issue that we're trying to address sometimes it's easy easier to get than others but it is surprising how much information is actually out there and how simply if we actually knew where to look we could get it we in CSD had a session with our senior managers a couple of weeks ago half day session which we called data day and we talked with Department of Human Services who owned the big centre link were in machine of all of the data that they have in administrative data that we could find out stuff from if we ask the right questions and then we looked internally and realised we had absolutely bucket loads of data that we've also collected that we haven't interrogated in particular ways that will also help us so data and evidence is really important and the understanding the demographics of where we're working in the ACT is also important Julie's right that there aren't giant Mount Druits in the ACT but there is disadvantage scattered throughout the whole of the territory so we need to look at our service delivery models with that kind of information in mind I think the last thing I would say is that and I want to quote minister gentleman when he talked to the sector leaders forum last week he said something along the lines and I should know because I approved the speech that the system will change the sector will look different in five years or ten years and it will because we know things are changing we know people have higher expectations of government we know that there are big policy changes coming over the horizon the NDIS is an absolutely monumental change to the human services service system the expectations of the people with a disability for what their futures hold under this new arrangement are really significant and that will have a downstream impact on what are the services that are provided who are the organisations that are working in the ACT what do they look like I mean the minister said there will always be diversity but what does diversity look like it might be that there are organisations who decided to join up together to provide a continuum of service in a way they never thought possible before so we have to understand that change is inevitable and the fact that you or we have been doing this thing this way for twenty years whatever it is isn't going to change is like putting your head in the sand and so those are the conversations that we need to have and that's what as a line agency we should be leading in any respects because we actually have to change the way we deliver services in many cases because we can't afford to continue them the way they are all the populations change all the government has set a different policy which has a an impact you know federal government I mean an impact that we hadn't anticipated so we've got a different cohort of people coming to us all of those things will make something look different and the fact that we say we need to make it look different isn't to say that what's gone before was a waste of time or rubbish or useless or stupid or any of those things it was the basis on which we're going to do the next level one of the things that I wanted to end on is about decision making as I said I worked for the public health system for quite a long while in my early in my career and about 15 years after I left the Ilewara I was asked to go back to help them with a particularly sticky problem to do with buying services from the private sector because the public system just couldn't cope and we had to negotiate a way of doing that and it was going nowhere and when I'd come in when I came in I think the hospital had been at it for about 12 months and everybody was exercising everybody hated each other's guts and every time they got into a room everybody went bright red and nothing happened and they left it's kind of like Russia and the Ukraine you know that kind of it was about that level and what was happening is services weren't being provided to patients who actually needed them so one of the things that I did was to sit down with all of the records because you know good public servants we keep eons of records to understand how we got to where we were what were the issues and I remember reading a particular brief that went to the board of the day you know 15 years before or something and as I was reading and I was saying oh my God who was the stupid person who set that to the board and I turned it over and I had my signature on it now I use that story because at the time 15 years before based on what was happening you know what was the expectations who was in government because the government had changed twice since then you know bloody blah that was the right decision for that time moving on 15 years I'm going are you nuts like and then I had to kick myself so because it was me so what I'm saying is sometimes decisions will be made policy settings will be established programs will be funded but sometime down the track they don't fit they don't meet the needs they have to be changed so one of the things that I would encourage you to do and we do it too because often in CSD people say I invented that thing you know like I've been in the CSD for 30 years and this was my baby we're going yeah I know it's lovely let's have a cake do something else it's okay when we have to change something that is not a statement about the usefulness of it for the last 30 years so when we do talk about that again please don't don't think that it's because we're actually having a different conversation at a subterranean level about the the work that's been done because we're not so as a line agency we have to work really closely with the people in our service system which could be other government directorates but it's often and probably more times than not the people in this room it is important to have a relationship built on trust and the reality is sometimes you will be told no sometimes I'm told no I get a bit cross but I'll have a cake or maybe two and then I'll get on with it my job is to serve the government of the day your job is to serve the constituents that you serve and to inform us so we can inform the government of things that need to be done that's the partnership so there's a whole cabinet process which I'm sure Geoffrey will talk to you about which means we rewrite briefs a thousand times and they go in and out in and out in and out of the minister's officers and so there is a whole internal kind of world of writing that we have to do as public servants again to have transparency but at the end of the day from where I'm sitting it's about having good conversations to inform the work that we do so thank you very much for your time thank you very much Sue we'll have some questions one just I'm Jenny Stewart from Mental Illness Education, ACQ so you made a clear distinction in your talk between politics and policy and talked about the data and evidence that goes into policy and I think Julie also mentioned that but I guess the reality is that in the ACQ particularly public servants have a lot of power a lot of decisions are made by public servants and so you guys are subjected to some quite heavy duty lobbying from different interests many of which perhaps are competing against each other for resources so I wonder if you could say a bit about how you as a professional in this area handle those kinds of pressures did everyone hear the question it's about public servants having lots of power in the ACT I wish but you're right because because we live in a small community we do bump into people who want to lobby us or tell us about their good idea or the thing that they think is not right and so on and so forth I mean we have a lot of influence in the sense that we inform the government about issues the fact that somebody sees me down at the IGA and says I think we need to do X and I might actually agree with it that might be something that we really really need to do I don't have any authority to make that happen I don't I mean I can go back and talk within CSD and say this is an interesting idea that was given to me at the IGA and I'm wondering if we could build this into another program or a budget bid we're putting up or you know something and we can talk about it and we might be able to put it in as an option or as an idea that the minister might want to consider but at the end of the day we can't just decide to do that even things like grants programs we have not a lot of money but we have money that we can provide in grants to organisations but there's always a process there are criteria there's a selection team who have to make a recommendation to the delegate so it's not something that somebody individually can do and as public servants we need to remember that I mean it's not our money it's the public's money it's the public's program it's the public's whatever so lots of people do talk to me at functions and I make notes or I get them to send me an email so I can consider it because I don't have all good ideas my colleagues don't have all the good ideas lots of people have good ideas and it's important that we have a way of hearing about those but it doesn't mean we can automatically just because my value set says that's a fabulous thing we should be doing it I can actually make that happen I could enter into the discussion and put those views forward and I can argue strongly but at the end of the day it might not get up and if it gets up it might get up in a different form or it might not be owned by somebody else or whatever it happens to be so I think that there is often a perception that public servants are much more powerful than they are there are a few public servants who are incredibly powerful that's you know in like utopia there's an EL2 who runs everything from what I can tell I think he's an EL2 he might be an EL1 I don't really know and a couple of his friends but other than that all of us actually have a job of work to do and we need to be and we are held accountable for that yes I'm just interested in hearing you talk some more about consultation my name's Anne Layman I'm from the Modbus Chlorosis Organisation we're a pretty small organisation we don't have a lot of resources here I'm thinking about a couple of experiences that I've had I guess in the past year with consultation one has been with the NDIS and I think there were some great consultative opportunities there and it was made very clear that there were some things that we could contribute to and some things that we couldn't and I thought that was great and I felt that community organisations were able to make a difference in the crafting of that but I can think of another example say with the grants program that related to health education and there was sort of a shift I think it related to what Julie said about being a mile wide and an inch thick and there was a decision to kind of focus on some areas and there was some consultation there where I walked away thinking well that was a really complete waste of time because the decisions had already been made about that so why did we bother? So I'm just interested to hear what you've got to say about the consultative process and the resources for small organisations Look, someone asked the question The question was consultation processes and especially with small organisations who get well in Canberra we consult a lot about lots of things and I know that the sector has often said to me there's too many consultations we spend our whole life having a meeting with you because you want us to be consulted on stuff and we do but we have to be really, really sensible about that because I mean nobody can spend their whole lives in a consultation So there's two parts to it There is consultation that might be very broad a broad remit and the Human Service Blueprint is probably a good example of that where we had an idea about how to join up a service system but we actually hadn't worked out what it could look like, should look like how it should actually hang together So the consultations early in that started to formulate that which turned into a co-design effort with intensive co-design with not every person who needed to be involved they couldn't we just said we need some good brains from the sector to think about this stuff and that's what we did So that was consultation from the kernel of the idea and we started off broad and then we got down to the point again and we got a half a dozen people or 10 or 20 or whatever it was in a room to actually think the issue through that didn't mean we're ignoring everybody else but there has to be a practicality There are some consultations which actually are not about the decision the government makes a decision and what they may wish to consult on is how to implement that decision in the most efficacious way So it might be that the decision is made so don't go back over it the decisions made, cabinet has decided that the assembly has voted, it's done You might like it, but that's the process but the next phase that we want people to be involved in often is how best to make that happen and again, we don't necessarily when I say we, I mean the government and the bureaucracy don't necessarily go in saying this is the only way we could deliver that policy outcome we've probably got a fair idea because that's probably what we've costed it on when it's gone up through the budget process but in the discussions around how to do that we can tweak it, we can move it it is valuable to understand and it might be that we can change it right now we might say, well look, let's get it rolling and then we'll do a review in 12 months we'll measure, look at the data has it actually had the impact or whatever and then we can tweak it again So consultation comes in lots of kind of varieties and if you really believe as an organisation in the non-gov sector, you just don't have the resources to be consulted, to be in the consultation room find other ways of getting your voice heard time to talk, I mean Julie, use time to talk Chief Ministers, what's it called? Talk back on a Friday people ring up with all kinds of things I mean there are ways, write a letter you don't have to sit in a room for two days you could write a letter and we could follow that up with you so there are different ways of consulting but I think it is important to understand that sometimes you are not going to be consulted on the decision per se but you are going to be consulted leading up to when the government does make a decision to get information in there and you might be consulted on once the decision is made about what we're going to do next so think about where you put your efforts and your energies to do that Any other questions? Yes, question down here I just had a question about like the focus on outcome but in the community sector often the impacts of what is done doesn't fit the political timeframe I wanted to give you this comment on that I think that's absolutely true and I think that often a good idea it's time has to come for it to get traction and so I think the data might be showing us or the evidence might be showing us something we need to start that conversation about why is that so and again like I say maybe tweak some of the policy settings is not a radical overhaul but maybe do something different to move it along during that time that we've got to do the work but at the end of the day if a good idea's time hasn't come I'm a great believer of shoving it in the bottom drawer and then when the time sounds like it's right there's a new thing that the government wants to do a new government wants to do something sometimes you think that's this this is a really good idea this is dust it off, change the date, change the name change the colour and stick it back up the agenda because the reality is there are political cycles there are particular things that are popular at certain times in any subject matter in any subject matter so some things are actually on the forefront of people's minds now outcomes are really important because often in the past we have paid for widgets you know like how many of these things went in the door I mean I use this example internally with our Learning and Development Centre they tell me how many people have sat in a room and had a course and I'll go yeah well that's all lovely but actually has decision making improved the fact that we've had you know 47 of our EL1s in a room for three days learning how to make good decisions did anything improve how are we measuring that, what was the... that's more important to me because we could just everybody could have a lovely time and there's a nice catering and we all go home and nothing changes and we're interested in Commonwealth data yes and that's why we are interested in you know Commonwealth data because getting that knowledge base can actually help inform where we're going because that's longitudinal and then we can say okay we think this is the trajectory so five years out it's probably going to look like this what can we start doing now to shift the boat because you know government is a big ship and it takes a while to turn it around so don't despair but recognise the reality I mean you know there are political realities and there are ideas whose times need to come later on but keep that work because it's good work usually other questions thank you very much thank you thank you