Case Studies and Resources

In this case a forum was formed as a result of a high-level mandate to establish a whole-of-government approach to human services.  Despite the rhetoric of ‘collaboration’ in the policy documents and language used the actual purpose and actions undertaken within the forum directly aligned with achieving better coordination of government policy and resources for more effective and efficient service delivery; that is, they sought to achieve more coherent polices, joined-up services and joint program outcomes.

The forum—comprising a number of government departments—initially relied on relationships formed through members’ prior work experiences to create closer links between departments for more coherent policies and services. This formal work experience was relied upon to generate understanding of each other and their departments, including the challenges and opportunities confronting their organisations and, in so doing, secure commitment to work better across departmental silos. However, these informal relations proved insufficient to shift from each Director’s primary focus on their own organisation or department and were eventually supplemented by the inclusion of formalised and stronger integration mechanisms, such as regularly scheduled and highly structured meetings, set programs of work and planned agendas. Supporting this was a Secretariat to provide administrative support and detailed programmatic information via a regular suite of communications. In addition the Premier of the state government acted as a powerful change agent, offering both positive and negative enticements to drive higher identification and engagement with the forum.  

The combined effect of this array of targeted and deliberate integration strategies and techniques meant that the previous low-level information sharing activities and limited commitment to network goals began to change, with more evidence of working towards collective rather than individual goals. Magnifying this change was the opportunity for Directors to spend quality time in an informal environment with government Ministers and local leaders —thus increasing opportunities for more personal interactions. As a consequence of this, there was a greater understanding and appreciation of issues,  the forum was better able to push past turf-based impediments and merely cooperative behaviour to exhibit more coordinative actions, more closely identified with the established goals of joint programming and policy development.

In summary, the formal focus of the forum was on collaboration, but in reality their goals were directly aligned with achieving coordination, while initially the relationship strength was cooperative.   These largely cooperative relationships had to be ‘turbo charged’  using more intensive relational building mechanisms, coupled with vertical integrating tools of the appointment of a Secretariat, mandate and formal structural integrating mechanisms.