Katarina Slavich
3 September 2021: Researchers from four Australian universities have received funding for original research in the field of public administration relevant to public service practitioners.
$15,000 was awarded to three research projects by a joint committee of the University of Canberra and the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA).
“This partnership demonstrates the benefits of university collaboration with a member-based organisation like IPAA that promotes excellence and pride in public service across Australia,” said Professor Darren Sinclair, Director of the Centre for Change Governance at the University.
“Public administration is undergoing a period of rapid transformation, with the advent of digitisation and big data, together with new and demanding challenges such as COVID-19, and the need to addresses integrity, diversity and inclusion. It is more important than ever, therefore, for academics to provide research insights to practitioners – this can only happen with funding, which the IPAA has generously provided to three excellent projects”.
IPAA’s National Executive Director, Caroline Walsh said that the three research projects would deliver real-world insights for public servants and those involved in the wider public purpose sector.
"We are really pleased to be able to support these projects researching areas of public administration that are topical and important to the profession, not only now, but into the future."
Associate Professor Joshua Newman from Monash University was awarded $6,000 for research to support the ethical application of artificial intelligence in Australian Public Administration.
His project intends to chart awareness, concerns, and strategies for dealing with ethics in the use of artificial intelligence across the Australian Federal Government, by engaging with administrative decision-makers who manage these systems.
Dr Maria Maley from the Australian National University was awarded $3,000 for research into the career steps following work as a ministerial adviser.
Australia’s federal ministerial staff system allows public servants to take leave and work as ministerial staff and later return to the public service. Dr Maley has previously collected data from the pre-minister’s office careers of 715 ministerial staff, who worked for federal ministers from 2010−2017 to determine what proportion of the staff came from the public service, in order to better understand the interaction of the public service and ministers’ offices, and movement between the two institutions.
Dr Maley now wants to know what proportion of ministerial staff who moved from departments into ministerial adviser positions subsequently returned to the public service, how many left the public service, and to what degree ministerial staff (who were not originally drawn from the public service) entered the public service after leaving a ministerial adviser position.
Dr Warren Staples and Dr John Howe from the University of Melbourne and Dr Diep Nguyen and Professor Stephen Teo from Edith Cowan University were awarded $6,000 for research into understanding capabilities in social procurement implementation.
The research project will study the implementation of social procurement frameworks in Victoria and Western Australia. Social procurement refers to the sourcing of goods, works or services in ways that create social value beyond just the value of the encapsulated acquisition of the goods, works or services being acquired.
More information on the fund is available on IPAA's national website.
