Australian Experiences with Whole of Government: Constraints and Paradoxes in Practice

Increasingly, public managers are faced with complex problems that require thinking and working across boundaries. Such problems span agencies, portfolios and jurisdictions and require actors to work across these boundaries, however, working in this manner requires inter-agency collaboration and cooperation and is based on the premise that important goals of public policy cannot be delivered through the separate activities of existing organisations. Such approaches are pursued due to the notion that the coordination or integration of services will achieve a better result than each party acting separately. In addition, a common assumption is that working across boundaries will enable more efficient and effective policy development, implementation, and service delivery. However, in practice, constraints and barriers lead to less than optimal and, sometimes, paradoxical outcomes.This paper reports upon the initial stages of a large-scale study of whole of government (WG) experiments in the Australian Public Service (APS). Drawing on empirical research across multiple organisations the paper addresses three areas. First, we identify conflicting terminology and provide definitions of whole of government derived from its use in practice. Second, we report on the critical enablers and major barriers to effective whole of government operationalisation. Thirdly, we consider ongoing tensions and some emerging paradoxes which emerge from attempts to work across boundaries in a WG fashion. Some tentative advice for developing effective WG working is proffered.