SOCS3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Public Administration, Regulatory Capture, Organization Development
25 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCS3100
Policy Development, Program Management, and Evaluation
April 18, 2018
WEEK 6
Policy / Program Implementation: Pitfalls and Trends
Prior to 1970s – Implementation taken for granted
• Early policy science literature
o Largely assumed policy decisions would be carried out
• Public administration literature
o Role of public servants is to comply with legislative decisions to carry out
policy decided by ministers
• Why didn’t policies achieve what they were assigned to achieve?
o Because people on the ground don’t implement it properly
Pressman and Wildavsky’s study
• Study of economic development / employment programs targeting unemployed
black inner-city residents in Oakland, California
• People did not get jobs. Minority businesses did not flourish. The abandoned
streets of Oakland did not return to life
1. Policy not based on a realistic model of white employer hiring practices
2. Overseeing agency not experienced in enforcing implementation compliance
Since the 1970s – Awareness of an implementation gap
High rate of implementation misfires due to policy design being fundamentally
flawed, or government agencies lacked expertise/resources. One thing for politicians to
promise, another for government agencies to deliver.
Literature focus
• How policy decision was carried out
• How its goals were refined / deviated from when implemented
• Did policy have the impact sought?
• If not, was the intended policy actually implemented?
• If it was, was the policy design flawed?
Poor implementation and poor outcomes
1. Training Guarantee Levy Act
a. Private sector has never trained enough people to meet its own skill
needs. Chronic skills shortages emerged from 1980 after public sector
ceased to be a net supplier of skilled workers to the private sector (post-
war strategy).
b. Act forced businesses to spend equivalent of 1.5% of payroll on staff
training, or donate it to a non-profit training provider, or remit it to the tax
department.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
c. Created an industry of senior management training programs on river
cruise boats, golf courses, and luxury resorts
d. Skills shortages persisted
e. NOTES
f. Public was net supplier of skilled workers to private sector
g. Public has never trained enough skilled workers to fulfill needs
h. Self-interest of workers
i. Chronic skill shortages
j. Impose tax on business community
i. Force them to train workers
ii. Pay to tax department or spend on training staff
2. Victorian fires services – 2009 Victorian bushfires royal commission
a. 3 different fire services – MFB, CFA, DSE
b. Radios couldn’t talk to each other
c. Different hose couplings – could not connect to each other
d. Different terminology – jargon problems
e. Arguments over who was in command during joint operations – different
grade structures
f. MFB / CFA boundaries established in 1890s – not changed since 1958
g. Urbanized areas demanding full-time (8 minute) fire response
i. Conservative politicians / LNP telling volunteers in remote country areas union
wants to take them over – firefighters spat on / attacked at fires
Factors in implementation shortfalls
1. Problem complexity – nature of problem itself
a. Simple – make seatbelts compulsory / ban smoking in workplaces
b. Harder – raise literary
c. Complex – promote multiculturalism / promote equal opportunity
d. Easier to define – cash benefits
i. How much
ii. Age cut offs
e. Harder to define – provision of services
i. Harder based on who you’re dealing with
ii. What the service entrails, scope, limits
2. Program design not based on realistic solution to problem
a. EXAMPLES
i. Seeking to lower unemployment by intensifying pressure on
unemployed to apply for jobs that are not there
ii. Computerized data matching to identify overpayments
iii. Replacing public sector TAFE with more efficient private training
providers
→ Sometimes, policy is working as government hoped – BUT not in conformance
with what the told the electorate
Ex. To make employed people fear losing their jobs, to create a more disciplined
workforce
3. Inappropriate level of policy / legislation specificity / vagueness
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Pressman and wildavsky"s study: study of economic development / employment programs targeting unemployed black inner-city residents in oakland, california (cid:1688)people did not get jobs. The abandoned streets of oakland did not return to life(cid:1689: policy not based on a realistic model of white employer hiring practices, overseeing agency not experienced in enforcing implementation compliance. High rate of implementation misfires due to policy design being fundamentally. Since the 1970s awareness of an (cid:1688)implementation gap(cid:1689) flawed, or government agencies lacked expertise/resources. One thing for politicians to promise, another for government agencies to deliver. Poor implementation and poor outcomes: training guarantee levy act, private sector has never trained enough people to meet its own skill needs. Sometimes, policy is working as government hoped but not in conformance with what the told the electorate. Treasury / reserve bank secretly refused induced a recession in. Treasury refused to assist in preparation of 1974 budget. Treasury doctored loan documents and submitted them to solicitor.
