Evaluating Policy Advice: The Australian Experience

Abstract

Mandarins give policy advice. The process is shrouded in the mystique of confidentiality. Policy advising is regarded as the ultimate skill, the height of ambition for civil servants, far above responsibility for the exercise of executive authority in the delivery of services. For departmental secretaries this policy-advising relationship with the minister is a crucial element of their success; for senior officials access to the minister may be an indication of their centrality to the department’s interests. The challenge of advising ministers is the ultimate ambition for many in public service. But how well is the job done? In part there seems to be an implicit assumption that good people give good advice. If the system ensures those who reach the top of the civil service are properly talented, then it follows that the quality of advice will be based on firm foundations. Where policies fail, it can be argued, it is because the government failed to listen. Since ministers take decisions, failures need not indicate the advice provided by officials was poor. However such assumptions need to be tested. Programme evaluation is now routinely undertaken, but the evaluation of policy advice has been left to more informal mechanisms. Yet policy advice is a crucial determinant in public sector activity. Policy advice may be difficult to assess. It is, after all, eventually a matter of judgement, an art or craft rather than a science (Wildavsky 1979; Waller 1996, p. 12). It usually requires the reduction of a complex problem to a set of options, based on assumptions about causation, and compatible with government policies or directions. There is no guarantee ministers will accept the advice. Nor should there be. Hence in the process of evaluation the emphasis must be more on the development of advice than on resultant action. Acceptance cannot be an absolute criterion of good advice. Even when advice is accepted without change, there may be problems of