On Future-Ready Government: Challenges and Core Attributes

Julia Gillard: One thing always in short supply is time. It is hard to slow down in an age where everything is coming at you so quickly, but governments need to make time for deeper reflection and thinking—within their political structures and in their intersections with the civil service and stakeholders. They will then be better able to prioritise, reflect on the nature of their institutions deeply, think about future challenges, and improve their governance.

That said, I do not underestimate how difficult it is to do that while on the job. When I was the Australian Prime Minister, I would try to carve out time for that deeper reflection, even though we did not have quite enough of that while in the whirlwind of government.

Margaret Hodge: Prioritising and giving yourself time to think is essential. When I was Minister for Children in the U.K., there was one day when I had 16 meetings scheduled. Prioritising might mean that you do not achieve everything, but you do get what you focus on done better.

I think you need to be absolutely clear on your purpose and priorities. Government is complex, so you must choose what to focus on. It took me time to understand this in my various government roles. Only in my last job did I fix on six clear objectives that I wanted to achieve. I did not let go of those, and that enabled me to go further.

Governments have a more limited reach today, so you will have to build good relationships with other stakeholders.

Margaret Hodge

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I also think flexibility matters: while you should have clear goals, you also cannot be rigid in responding to issues as they emerge.

Leadership is central to good governance. You see that across the world where you have more capable and collaborative leadership, you probably get better governance. In my experience, it is vital to have a good working relationship with your civil service. In the U.K., we have seen how confrontation between civil servants and politicians is deeply destructive and leads to poorer governance. You need to recognise each other’s strengths.

We also need to think of governance differently than we did a generation ago. Governments have a more limited reach today, because of the impact of global events and international companies such as the Googles of the world. So you will have to build good relationships with other stakeholders, in the private sector and in civil society.

Kenneth Sim: I am going to take a different slant. Globally, there has been a slow but pernicious trend of declining trust in government. One Pew report shows that Americans’ trust in their government used to be close to 80% in the 1960s; it is now about 20%. A similar pattern shows up in different indicators related to trust elsewhere.

So, for me a future-ready government is one where trust in government and governance is restored and growing. This is important because research tells us that compliance to policies and the ability of government to execute policies is related to trust.

A future-ready government is one where trust in government and governance is restored and growing.

Kenneth Sim

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On Restoring Public Trust in Government and Governance Processes

Margaret Hodge: I spent a lot of my time in public health talking to politicians in different countries about accountability and anti-corruption measures, which are vital to public trust. One way to motivate officials on this issue is to make use of the fact that most politicians have a big ego. You might persuade them that if they were to use their authority to get corruption out of their system, that it would help them relate to their voters. They want to be popular with their voters and earn positive media coverage. It is a form of encouragement to them to be seen as advocates and leaders in trying to achieve a less corrupt administration.

Another thing I have found has helped is to build networks with women politicians. You can encourage them to develop new ways to practise good governance and show that there are other ways to succeed. That is not to say that what we do in the U.K., or the developed world, is the best. We also have much to learn from other countries, which may have less sophisticated governance structures, but which succeed in other ways, in terms of outcomes for their population that engender trust.

Julia Gillard: One thing for us to do is to interrogate the gap between what indicators and indices are telling us about government capability, and what the public thinks about government capability. We can see that with the democracies having elections this year. If you asked someone from the U.K. today where the country is on a good government index, they would probably say bottom 10. A happier person might say it ranks in the middle, but no one would place it in the top 20. We need to understand why there is such a difference between public perception and what the metrics are telling us.

Part of the issue may have to do with the way social media is shaping public perception in our societies. I do not think any government has figured out how to pursue deep, complex, long-term reforms in an environment of fractured attention and people’s ability to pick their own facts and truth, all of which could get worse with artificial intelligence (AI).

But our understanding of what the problems are is better than it used to be, and consumers of social media are also more knowledgeable now. Nor do we want to romanticise the past, when you could also get perverse outcomes with a few entitled and powerful media moguls deciding who they thought the government should be and what they should do. Today, it is more of a kaleidoscope, with more pieces in play and the picture changing all the time.

On Addressing Emerging Technologies Such as AI for the Public Good

Julia Gillard: AI is an issue that goes beyond national boundaries, and therefore beyond the realm of nation-states. It is something that ultimately, like climate change and other global challenges, is going to require international cooperation. Governments need to play a role in driving that and someone needs to be the one to initiate the diplomatic dialogue that gets everyone thinking about the intergovernmental arrangements and attention needed. Good governance is not just thinking about AI but also driving action—not waiting for someone else in the international community to be doing it.

To give an example: when mapping human DNA first became possible, there was a debate about whether it ought to be done commercially or by the non-profit sector. Ultimately, sections of DNA were mapped in various parts of the world until we had the whole human genetic code. This knowledge was then made available as a free scientific asset to researchers and healthcare providers around the world.

AI is an issue that goes beyond national boundaries... Good governance is not just thinking about AI but also driving action.

Julia Gillard

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More recently, Google’s DeepMind AI has been used to determine how biological proteins fold. Knowing how proteins are structured is important to scientific research, but identifying the fold is hugely cumbersome to work out without AI. Google DeepMind released its AlphaFold platform free of charge to the global community and scientists are using it today. The developers could have made
this proprietary technology and charged people to use it. That is just an early example of the questions around public good that could come up with AI. Many of these AI-led outcomes are so resource-intensive that no one government could fund them on its own, let alone try to regulate such technologies when they are moving around the planet in a borderless way.

In AI, there is a vast knowledge gap between the specialists, the decision-makers and policymakers, and the public. Thus, building the independent expertise will be hugely important. I think what we need is a global architecture that features an independent expert panel that figures out the science and relevant perspectives to bring to the decision-making table. You see this in climate change where a scientific panel brings updates on issues to Conference of the Parties (COP) and nation-states during negotiations.

Margaret Hodge: One concern I have with AI is that, unlike climate change, there may not be the same binding sense of common interest. In trying to achieve international agreement for AI, we are likely to be met with more competitive approaches. We may then end up with lowest common denominator outcomes that are not enough to address the attendant needs and risks in the longer run.

Another consideration is that while AI has become central to conversations in government, there is a danger that it and other advances in technology become regarded as self-evident solutions: whereas they ought to be seen as tools that fit into broader strategies, not strategies in themselves.

On Balancing Short-Term Political Priorities with Long-Term Planning and Capability Building

Margaret Hodge: I think the idea of short term versus long term planning is a false dichotomy. If your party comes into government in the next election, it is imperative in the first 100 days to demonstrate real change, so the short term does matter. You must earn the confidence and trust you want, and set a sense of direction and forward momentum.

In the U.K., we face an incredibly difficult governance legacy, with a sluggish economy, high taxes, a public service in disarray, the impact of Brexit, and abject public trust in politics and government. If I were in government, I would first find a way to gauge where we are, so we have a baseline against which to measure the progress we make over time. I would also want to have an agenda for how we would clean up government and how we are going to govern in a way that is more transparent and accountable: to reset the social compact.

Short term vs long term is a false dichotomy... You must earn the confidence and trust you want, and set a sense of direction and forward momentum.

Margaret Hodge

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During the Labour government in the late 1990s, we had five simple and specific pledges, which we would list on little cards. Some of these were pledges such as reducing class sizes in primary schools and reducing waiting lists in healthcare. The moment we started to deliver on these, we realised we had gotten them wrong. We wanted to raise standards in education and healthcare, but class sizes and waiting lists were not the key factors. Getting the policy specifics right in the context of your wider aspiration for public outcomes is a considerable challenge in government.

In terms of capability, we need to not just develop policies, but also manage delivery and services well in a fragmented environment. Like many other societies, the U.K. now has a very mixed economy, with over half of our public services being delivered by private sector institutions. The skills and capabilities needed in the civil service are therefore completely different from a generation ago.

Julia Gillard: What is terrifying about the first 100 days of being in government is that there are no great systems of capability building for politicians and special advisors. In my experience, you are literally told that you are now the Minister of X, this is your office, you are entitled to these staff, here are the promises we made in the electoral campaign, knock yourself out. The strongest survive, and the weakest get caught in controversy in the first 12 months, while the rest try to keep their heads down and hope no one notices that they are not doing particularly well.

Political parties are usually smart enough to start capability building in the opposition, but sustaining it when in office is difficult. It requires some thought before you get there. You are under a lot of pressure and tension, so you do need people who can be your wise counsel. I would recommend building up this capability even as you are rolling out your 100-day plan.

The difficulty is bridging from what you have promised in the electoral campaign to the longer-term rhythm of government.

Julia Gillard

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The difficulty is bridging from what you have promised in the electoral campaign to the longer-term rhythm of government. Political promises only come in three flavours: you promise a thing, you promise a law or regulation, or you promise a process, such as to have a commission or inquiry once you are in office. In government, you will get quick advice about how to deliver a thing, and plenty of help to draft legislation. But you normally come out of an electoral campaign with multiple process promises. To thoughtfully programme these in a cross-governmental fashion so they come together in a rational and digestible way is work that needs to be done in the first 100 days. If you do not get it right in this time, you will be left with landmines to trip over for the rest of your term. Such preparatory work is less visible, but it is incredibly important.

How you put together your electoral manifesto, how you build robust systems in government so you can recalibrate programmes as situations change, how resilient and agile your governance is: all these have partly to do with character and leadership. But it is also about having good processes, and how well people can come together to deal with any changes that may be needed as they arise.

Kenneth Sim: At the Chandler Institute of Governance, we work with government leaders all over the world. In my conversations with them— both politicians and public servants—two things frequently come up.

The first is the issue of resources: fiscal envelopes are tight. Unfortunately, this often builds pressure to cut funding for government capability development, such as civil service colleges or national schools of development. The second issue is that of mutual recrimination between politicians and civil servants. The politicians may say, “Hey I have a great idea”, but lament that the civil servants are lethargic and are not following their agenda. Conversely, civil servants may say, “I want to do more, but I have no political support and they cut my funding [for training and capability development]”. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

It would be unfortunate if governments were to ignore capability building across the whole of government.

Kenneth Sim

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It would be unfortunate if governments were to ignore capability building across the whole of government because of these issues. Government is made up of many different entities and operates at many different levels. But effective service delivery and policy implementation require each of these disparate parts to work closely together. This calls for having a strong corps of public service leaders, who speak the same language and share the same ethos, and can coordinate among themselves. After all, a government is only as strong as its weakest link.