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Many public policy programs fail to translate ambitious headlines to on-the-ground action. The reasons for this are many and varied, but for public administration and management scholars a large part of the gap between ambition and achievement is the challenge associated with the operation of the machinery of government itself, and how it relates to the other parties that it relies on to fulfill these outcomes. In their article, Carey and Friel set out key reasons why public health scholars should seek to better understand important ideas in public administration. In commenting on their contribution, I draw out two critical questions that are raised by this discussion: (i) what are boundaries and what forms do they take? and (ii) why work across boundaries? Expanding on these key questions extends the points made by Carey and Friel on the importance of understanding public administration and will better place public health scholars and practitioners to realise health outcomes.

It is a long held tradition of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) to invite speakers to address the Fellow's Colloquium as part of the annual symposium, with an aim to spark discussion and debate on a controversial and contemporary topic. In 2010 the debate was focused on the question of whether there had been a degradation of the professional capacity of the Australian Public Service (APS) with regard to effective policy development and implementation. The contributions of each of the four panel members are reproduced here, in part, and they reflect the diverse perspectives which informed a robust and compelling debate. Janine O'Flynn, the editor of these contributions, argues that any claim of degradation is based on rumour rather than hard evidence, and she sets out how we might think about policy capacity from a public sector management perspective. Sue Vardon, the former CEO of Centrelink and the architect of a transformation change program which redefined the delivery of public services in Australia, reflects on the strengths of the APS, but points out the current stresses that it now finds itself under. Anna Yeatman, an expert in political theory and its application to citizenship and public policy, argues that in the last twenty years we have witnessed degradation in the work of government and that this has impacted on policy capacity. Lyn Carson, an expert in deliberative democracy, points to the unrealised capacity that could come from increasing citizen involvement. Policy capacity is degraded, she argues, because we have systems that are neither deliberative nor representative. Individually these contributions spark their own controversies; together they ask us to consider the question in different ways.

It is a long held tradition of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) to invite speakers to address the Fellow's Colloquium as part of the annual symposium, with an aim to spark discussion and debate on a controversial and contemporary topic. In 2010 the debate was focused on the question of whether there had been a degradation of the professional capacity of the Australian Public Service (APS) with regard to effective policy development and implementation. The contributions of each of the four panel members are reproduced here, in part, and they reflect the diverse perspectives which informed a robust and compelling debate. Janine O'Flynn, the editor of these contributions, argues that any claim of degradation is based on rumour rather than hard evidence, and she sets out how we might think about policy capacity from a public sector management perspective. Sue Vardon, the former CEO of Centrelink and the architect of a transformation change program which redefined the delivery of public services in Australia, reflects on the strengths of the APS, but points out the current stresses that it now finds itself under. Anna Yeatman, an expert in political theory and its application to citizenship and public policy, argues that in the last twenty years we have witnessed degradation in the work of government and that this has impacted on policy capacity. Lyn Carson, an expert in deliberative democracy, points to the unrealised capacity that could come from increasing citizen involvement. Policy capacity is degraded, she argues, because we have systems that are neither deliberative nor representative. Individually these contributions spark their own controversies; together they ask us to consider the question in different ways.

Both practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in the idea of public value as a way of understanding government activity, informing policy-making and constructing service delivery. In part this represents a response to the concerns about 'new public management', but it also provides an interesting way of viewing what public sector organisations and public managers actually do. The purpose of this article is to examine this emerging approach by reviewing new public management and contrasting this with a public value paradigm. This provides the basis for a conceptual discussion of differences in approach, but also for pointing to some practical implications for both public sector management and public sector managers.

Both practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in the idea of public value as a way of understanding government activity, informing policy-making and constructing service delivery. In part this represents a response to the concerns about 'new public management', but it also provides an interesting way of viewing what public sector organisations and public managers actually do. The purpose of this article is to examine this emerging approach by reviewing new public management and contrasting this with a public value paradigm. This provides the basis for a conceptual discussion of differences in approach, but also for pointing to some practical implications for both public sector management and public sector managers.

In this article we present a unique study of how a nation, Bhutan, is using a specific change management approach-organisational development-as the lever for system-level change in pursuit of a complex, multi-level suite of goals to, ultimately, enhance Gross National Happiness (GNH). We argue that this represents one of the first attempts at using OD for wide-scale change, something hinted at decades ago, and flagged by recent work coming out of the United Nations Development Program and civil society organisations (CSOs). Conceptually, we point to a high level offit between the Bhutanese development philosophy and OD, and argue there is great potential for using OD in the context. However, we raise a series of issues around the practical feasibility of this approach highlighting important points of tension which pose major challenges for the Bhutanese experiment.

Reform is never far from the centre of public administration practice and scholarship. In this article Doug McTaggart, the chairman of the Queensland Public Service Commission, and Janine O'Flynn, from the University of Melbourne, explore the challenges of reform and the state of play. McTaggart, who was a commissioner on the Queensland Commission of Audit, sets out the case that business as usual will no longer suffice given the range of challenges faced by governments. He sets out to explain how we ended up in our current state and what needs to happen to repair it, drawing on deep experience in the practice of reform. O'Flynn positions reform as one of the central questions in public administration and management and makes the case for rethinking reform conceptually to drive change in practice. In doing so she points to our weaknesses in determining whether reform fails or succeeds and makes the case that, until we rethink reform, business as usual might be all we end up with. McTaggart and O'Flynn bring together the expertise of practice and academia to bring new insights in this persistent challenge of public administration, and raise a series of questions for debate.

This article draws on evidence from case studies of local government contracting in the Australian state of Victoria. It argues that one of the key elements of competitive tendering - the separation of purchasers from providers - undermines another of its essential mechanisms - the specification of services - at the point where previously in-house services are exposed to competition. The managers who are to become purchasers lack the requisite knowledge of services, which instead resides in the minds of the service delivery staff whose work is to be subjected to competitive processes. Separating purchasing from service-provision 'distances' the staff from the managers, impairing employees' willingness to share the relevant information. At the same time, the introduction of competition increases the probability that staff will withhold that knowledge, and makes it harder on probity grounds to maintain the type of collaborative relationship which might overcome their reluctance to share it.