Research projects
The New Digital Governance of Welfare to Work (2020-2024)
Exploring how digital delivery, as a policy design choice, improves frontline services and system governance, and supports policy learning to improve outcomes for jobseekers.
Digital delivery has the potential to enhance services, as well as reduce them – particularly for vulnerable populations. How this happens depends on how providers implement digitalisation in practice.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made exploring the practices of digitalisation even more critical. The shift to digital service provision is a hallmark of the pandemic, as people work, learn and socialise from home. There is more pressure on policy makers to find efficiencies. Employers and job seekers are also adjusting to a changing labour market and new risks. Many services have had to adapt. In some cases, customers have identified benefits they would like to see continue.
The research team examines how digitalisation of employment services changes governance at the ground level. We do this by looking at the complex effects of digitisation on service delivery to jobseekers and employers. The team works in collaboration with key industry partners:
- National Employment Services Association (NESA) – the employment services peak
- Westgate Community Initiatives Group (WCIG) – a community organisation that works with disadvantaged jobseekers in Melbourne.
The project seeks to:
- Examine how ‘digital first’ changes the delivery of employment services to all jobseekers
- Analyse the changes in roles and relationships between jobseekers, service providers, employers, and government (Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business)
- Explain how these changes impact our wider understanding of new forms of governance and accountability
- Examine whether the emerging system is more responsive to the needs of jobseekers and employers
- Identify policy learnings and service design enhancements that can be incorporated into the new system.
The project includes four streams of research:
- Benchmarking international case studies on experiments with digitalisation
- Australian case studies of the current/future use of digital tools by providers, jobseekers, employers and government
- Surveys exploring the impact of these changes on the frontline (adapting questionnaires undertaken in 1998, 2008, 2012 and 2016).
- Develop, with our industry partners, a Collaborative Innovation and Learning Lab (CILL) on digital governance and welfare-to-work reform.
Entitlement to Experiment (2016-2019)
This major research project investigates the important organisational dynamics that are generating major changes to contemporary welfare states.
The first of these changes is the shift towards governance driven by performance; a world of metadata matched by a new economy of incentives. The second is experimentation, new markets and the problematic way changes ‘from above’ seek to stimulate real service delivery change at street level. This increasingly involves international agencies and global knowledge transfer.
The research project aims to model and explain these dynamics using a multidimensional framework and a mix of surveys and field visits, to assist agencies wishing to innovate in order to help those most in need.
Publications associated with this project
Infographic on jobseeker streaming and assessment
Infographic on Can a public services market change: flexibility at the frontline?
Industry reports
- Lewis, J.M., Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and McGann, M. (2018), From Entitlement to Experiment: Industry report on case studies of high providing providers, The University of Melbourne. View Infographic on jobseeker streaming and assessment (140kb pdf)
- Lewis, J.M., Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and McGann, M. (2017), From Entitlement to Experiment: The new governance of welfare to work - UK Report back to Industry Partners, The University of Melbourne
- Lewis, J.M., Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and McGann, M. (2016), From Entitlement to Experiment: The new governance of welfare to work - Australian Report back to Industry Partners, The University of Melbourne
Publications
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Nguyen, P. (2020), “Contracting personalization by results: comparing marketization reforms in Australia and the UK”, in Public Administration: An International Quarterly. Wiley, March 2020
- McGann, M., Danneris, S., and O’Sullivan, S. (2019), “Introduction: Rethinking welfare-to-work for the long-term unemployed,” accepted for publication in Social Policy & Society
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Nguyen, P. (2019), “Locked-in or locked-out: Can a public services market really change?” (280kb pdf) in Journal of Social Policy, pp. 1-22
- McGann, M., Nguyen, P. and Considine, M. (2019), “Welfare Conditionality and Blaming the Unemployed,” (460kb pdf) in Administration and Society
- O’Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Considine, M. (2019), “The Category Game and its Impact on Street Level Bureaucrats and Jobseekers: An Australian Case Study,” (360kb pdf) in Social Policy & Society. View Infographic on jobseeker streaming and assessment (140kb pdf)
- Considine, M., Nguyen, P. and O’Sullivan, S. (2018), “New Public Management and the Rule of Economic Incentives: Australian Welfare-to-Work from Job Market Signalling Perspective,” in Public Management Review, 20(8), pp. 1186-1204
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2018), “The Policy-maker’s Dilemma: The Risks and Benefits of a ‘Black Box’ Approach to Commissioning Active Labour Market Programs,” in Social Policy and Administration, 52(1), pp. 229-52
Increasing Innovation and Flexibility (2011-2015)
This project explored how tax-funded social services are delivered by non-government agencies in Australia.
As part of the project, investigators developed a new model of the way regulation and innovation interact in public-private partnerships within social policy, including how such partnerships create ‘mission drift’ for both the policy programs and the agencies contracted to deliver social services.
By comparing the Australian case with other welfare systems using similar policy instruments and delivery mechanisms, this project has assisted agencies and government regulators to better understand how service delivery innovation can be achieved without excessive gaming and opportunism by private agencies or the loss of their distinctive missions.
Publications associated with this project
Industry reports
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and Toso, F. (2013), Increasing Innovation and Flexibility in Social Service Delivery: A Comparison of the Australian and UK 2012 Frontline Employment Services Survey Results, The University of Melbourne
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and Toso, F. (2013), Increasing Innovation and Flexibility in Social Service Delivery: UK Report back to Industry Partners, The University of Melbourne
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and Toso, F. (2013), Increasing Innovation and Flexibility in Social Service Delivery: Australian Report back to Industry Partners (1.2Mb pdf), The University of Melbourne
Academic publications
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2014), “New public management and welfare-to-work in Australia: Comparing the reform agendas of the ALP and the Coalition,” in Australian Journal of Political Science, 49(3), pp. 469-485
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2014), “Mission-drift? The Third Sector and the pressure to be business-like: Evidence from Job Services Australia,” in Third Sector Review, 20(1), pp. 87-107
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2014), “Governance, Boards of Directors and the Impact of Contracting on Not-for-profit (NFP) Organisations: an Australian study,” in Social Policy and Administration, 48 (2), pp. 169-187
- Considine, M. and O’Sullivan, S. (2014), “Introduction: Markets and the New Welfare - Buying and Selling the Poor,” in Social Policy and Administration, 48 (2), pp. 119-126
- Considine, M. and O’Sullivan, S. (2012), “Les réformes de l’activation des aides aux chômeurs en Australie” (The Reform of Active Labour Market Policy in Australia), in Informations Sociales
- Considine, M. and Lewis, J.M. (2012) “Networks and interactivity: making sense of front line governance in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia,” in Public Management Review, 14(1), pp. 1-22
Activating States (2008-2012)
Using benchmark data collected in 1998, the Activating States project investigated whether and how the so-called ‘activation’ of welfare clients has changed the frontline delivery of welfare-to-work services.
Since the 1980s, the presentation and delivery of welfare-to-work services has been transformed by structural and ideological pressures, resulting in increasingly market-driven and target-oriented approaches to service provision. This project compared and contrasted approaches to welfare-to-work service delivery adopted by Australia, the UK and the Netherlands since 1998. During this period, each of these countries adopted policies aimed at ‘activating’ welfare recipients: empowering them to develop job-ready skills, and to lessen their dependence on welfare assistance. The delivery of these policies was typically outsourced to third-party agencies, a significant change from traditional methods of welfare-to-work program design.
This analysis has provided a means to assess the components of the new target and market-driven systems in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands, and to compare the different tools used by each state for managing both clients and frontline staff.
Publications associated with this project
Industry reports
- Considine, M,, Lewis, J.M. and O’Sullivan, S. 2009, Activating States: transforming the delivery of ‘welfare to work’ services in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands – UK report back to Industry Partners (325kb pdf), The University of Melbourne
- Considine, M,, Lewis, J.M. and O’Sullivan, S. 2008, Activating States: transforming the delivery of ‘welfare to work’ services in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands – Australian report back to Industry Partners (330kb pdf), The University of Melbourne
Academic publications
- Considine, M. and Lewis, J.M. 2010, “Front-line work in employment services after ten years of New Public Management reform: Governance and activation in Australia, the Netherlands and the UK,” in European Journal of Social Security, 12(4), pp. 357-370
- Considine, M., Lewis, J. M., and O’Sullivan, S. 2009, “Activating States: transforming the delivery of ‘welfare-to-work’ services in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands,” in Working Brief (Journal of the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion), May, pp. 16-18