Executive summary

Policies are like the operating system for society: shaping, defining and used to uphold our rights and obligations, the rules we live by, which investments are prioritised, and how a country or nation is governed. But policies come in several distinct forms. For example, political parties campaign on their policy goals and, when elected, try to implement their policy agenda, often seeking policy advice from departments. At the same time, there is a relatively persistent legal framework of foundational policies including legislation, regulations and of course the constitution. All of which are higher in authority than the government of the day, and provide the legal mandate, guardrails, separations of power and operational authorities for the public sector. Public institutions manage a raft of operational policies, rules and whole of government frameworks that are meant to fill the gaps and deliver the intended outcomes from all of the above in consistent and high integrity ways. And we are all, more or less, subject to a whole range of international policies. Public servants need a way to consider and work effectively with and across each of these distinct forms of policy. The very existence of a public sector also provides critical framing for how public institutions, and by extension, how public servants and public policy making should operate. The general public reasonably expects public institutions to work in their favour. When they work well, people should benefit. Public institutions provide certainty, stability, standards, regulation of markets and the economy, and a variety of other mechanisms and services to support people when they need it, enabling a fair, free and prosperous society. This context shapes an expectation that policies and policymaking should also deliver and drive meaningful public good. The goal of this playbook is threefold:

1. to enable a clear and shared approach to different categories of policy, enabling all public servants to proactively and confidently advise, iterate, deliver and innovate with policy, engaging the right authorities and mechanisms for the right form of policy at the right time.
2. to thoroughly modernise how policy is conceived of, designed, delivered and managed, ensuring an adaptive, impactful, humane, sensory, evidence-driven and participatory approach to realising the intended policy outcomes. All while delivering the maximum and measurable public good within the legitimate constraints of legal, constitutional and legislated authorities.
3. to support all public servants to be confident stewards in ensuring that the arc of policy is always bent towards the greatest possible public good. This involves public sector leadership leaning into their delegations, delivering trustworthy and high integrity institutional mandates, while actively balancing and protecting the necessary tension that emerges in serving the government, the parliament and the people. In this playbook, we have taken a practical approach to policymaking in the public sector, not just by defining it in a meaningful and actionable way, but also by describing how to bring policies to life and make them measurable, impactful and adaptive. We have referred to and included practical resources and used a tone intended to be easy to read and encouraging. We’ve written for an international audience, but realise that our Australian experience and real world illustrative examples guide our assumptions and language. We encourage international readers to use the rights permitted by the CC-BY licence to create localised versions. This playbook is meant to be used as a support and reference rather than be read cover to cover. It has 3 sections:
4. Frameworks—where you’ll find definitions, methods and a “journey-based” approach to policy preparation, implementation and continuous improvements, including some handy templates to help.
5. Fitness—the mindsets, skills and tools needed to deliver great policy outcomes over time.
6. Foundations—provides some history and general knowledge about the special context of the public sector, including how this context should inform the behaviours and conduct of public servants day to day, not just to deliver policy outcomes, but to maintain trust, confidence in, and perceived legitimacy of public institutions. To the public servants reading this, thank you for your service. We hope you find this helpful. When public sectors work well, everyone benefits. When they work badly, everyone suffers. So the work you do every day matters to the community we serve; please make it count. For our part, this playbook is meant to be part of a toolkit to support public servants to make and deliver better policies and policy outcomes. We will continue to improve and evolve this resource over time. We follow a “practice what you preach” methodology, and have deliberately adopted an iterative approach to the development and deployment of the playbook using the combined wisdom of multiple sources, often in a scattered manner but always with practical focus and purpose. This is meant to invite and gather interaction, feedback and continuous improvement from users and readers. We welcome contributions for subsequent versions. A playbook comprises clearly recorded and detailed instructions, guidance, strategies, or “plays” to meet specific situations, duties, or opportunities. If a handbook can be thought of as the expression of the “rules of the game”, a playbook is what you use to consider “strategies for winning at the game”. This allows multiple players to consistently and confidently follow shared processes, enabling consistency, quality, efficiency, and repeatable success. New public servants can use the Frameworks section to onboard faster with followable instructions and contextual and cultural foundations cooked into the tools, process frameworks and models offered. The Fitness section provides ways of thinking and working to support effective policymaking. Some public servants might appreciate the history and context found in the Foundations section. The sensemaking and creative guides in the playbook may summarise what you already do, or present new options and improvements, including how you might scale or tailor policy options with better intention and care. Our audience is primarily public servants who are essential agents of a very large public sector ecosystem, in which all public servants have a role to play in creating and enacting policy outcomes. They must be ethically fit, intellectually robust and skillfully adept, able to simultaneously deliver anchored, calm and trusted security and reliability. They must also respond proactively and innovatively to shifting circumstances that are often rapidly changing with volatile turbulence and complexity. All of this while confidently being stewards for delivering public good. The Fitness section helps support this element by providing guidance on the mindsets, skills and tools needed for a modern public service. This playbook is therefore purposely meant to be used in a number of different ways. You could begin in the middle and read only a few sections, getting instructions on a particularly relevant “play” that is preoccupying you. Or you might attempt to move through the text in whatever way makes sense to you. Perhaps from the end to the beginning, perhaps reading “all over the place”, or alternatively pursuing a traditional path from beginning to end. Whichever the manner of takeup, the idea is that you get a feel for the overarching strategies and possibilities at your disposal as you engage in bringing policies to life. At the end of the day, public servants have to exercise their own discretion and judgement in confidently exercising their authority. This playbook helps you to do this well in real-time, actively, thoughtfully, and prudentially as stewards for sustainable, ethical and lawful public good of the communities you serve.