Policy in Action The Challenge of Service Delivery

Addressing the question of how public-policy formulation changed and affected the design and delivery of government programs and services in Australia, this analysis offers descriptive accounts of how public services programs are designed and implemented and how they might be better managed. Modern governments have undergone significant change during the past 30 years and such change has impacted the way governments structure their organizations, deliver services, and relate to their citizenry. Revealing the affects on Australian government, this study also compares both government and nongovernment services overseas.

John Wanna is the Australian and New Zealand School of Government (ANZOG) Foundation Professor of the Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration based at the Australian National University. He is a professor of public policy at Griffith University and has coauthored, edited, and contributed to a number of books and articles on comparative politics, public policy, and public sector budgeting and finance. John Butcher has worked as a policy practitioner chiefly in the areas of disability and housing policy. He manages production of the ANZSOG monograph series published by ANU E Press at the Research School for Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Benoît Freyens is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research School of Social Science at the Australian National University and is a former technical expert for the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) in Luxembourg as well as a former lecturer in economics at Deakin University and University of New South Wales.