The spatial context of Indigenous service delivery

Introduction: As with all economic activities that consider proximity to a client base as part of their locational decision-making, the geographic distribution of banking and financial services has, until quite recently at least, been determined largely by a spatial calculus of market demand and supply. In this estimation, market thresholds dictated by population (client) potential have been an overriding factor. because of the face-to-face mode of service delivery, the consequence was a widely distributed banking infrastructure reaching down the settlement hierarchy to the smallest of rural service centres. Over the past 15 years this has dramatically changed. As demonstrated by the House of Representatives Inquiry into Regional Banking Services (Commonwealth of Australia 1999), and as summarised by Beal (2002), market dynamics have induced a restructuring of the banking and financial services sector involving a shift away from face-to-face service delivery, due to branch closures, towards electronic modes of customer interaction. ... From the perspective of Indigenous individuals, families, households, community organisations and enterprises, these impacts must be considered against a background of relatively low economic status and a financial cycle in many localities that is best described as one of feast and famine (Westbury 1999). Thus the essential framework for an appreciation of appropriate policy responses to recent changes in banking infrastructure is a combination of spatial and socioeconomic contexts—who is in touch with what services, who is not, and where? This paper seeks to provide such a framework by outlining the nature of Indigenous population and settlement distribution. Comparison with the majority non-Indigenous population is made as it is the market power of the latter which provides the stimulus for decision-making regarding the spatial allocation of mainstream services. A second aim is to provide summary standard indicators of relative Indigenous socioeconomic status, particularly those that may have some bearing on options for the provision and delivery of appropriate banking and financial services

Whole of Government Indigenous service delivery arrangements

Introduction The 1967 referendum gave the Australian Parliament the Constitutional power to make laws for all Australian people, and to take account of Aboriginal people in determining the population of Australia. From 1967, Indigenous people were counted in the Australian census and included in base figures for Australian Government funding granted to the States and Territories on a per capita basis. Successive Australian Governments have modified the administration of Indigenous affairs with the objective of focusing attention on areas of Indigenous disadvantage. The objective of this audit was to assess how four key departments: Education, Science and Training (DEST); Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR); Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA); and Health and Ageing (DoHA) are implementing the 2004 Indigenous Affairs Arrangements (IAAs)

Initiatives to support the delivery of services to Indigenous Australians

This audit assessed the effectiveness of the Department of Human Services’ (DHS) implementation of initiatives to support the delivery of services to Indigenous Australians. Audit objective, criteria and scope The audit objective was to assess the effectiveness of DHS’ implementation of initiatives to support the delivery of services to Indigenous Australians. To form a conclusion against the objective, the ANAO adopted the following high level criteria: sound planning and administration arrangements were established to identify and address the access needs of Indigenous customers; service delivery arrangements were established to support the access needs of Indigenous customers; and performance monitoring and reporting arrangements provided visibility over service delivery to Indigenous customers and information to improve service delivery. Overall conclusion The Department of Human Services (DHS) provides services to a large proportion of the Indigenous population and expects that this customer group will continue to grow as a proportion of its overall customer base. Effective service delivery to disadvantaged groups remains challenging for government departments and a number of factors can affect access and uptake of services by Indigenous customers. In line with its goal of providing high quality services to all Australians, the department has made a number of organisational investments to better understand the needs of customers (including Indigenous customers) and the performance of the department in meeting customer needs through universally accessible services. The department has also acknowledged that accessibility to its universal services is central in its approach to Indigenous service delivery. Overall DHS has developed a reasonable approach to improving its focus on supporting the delivery of services to Indigenous Australians, although there is scope to apply key elements of the approach more consistently across the department. DHS’ key organisational responses to strengthening its approach to Indigenous servicing have included the development of the Indigenous Servicing Strategy in 2012; structural arrangements, including specialist staff focused on supporting Indigenous servicing at both the frontline and national office levels; consideration of Indigenous service delivery issues and priorities in departmental business planning; and development of systems and processes to monitor data relating to Indigenous access and use of DHS services. The department has also worked to promote improving Indigenous service delivery as a corporate priority to which all DHS areas need to contribute, and has promoted this priority through senior management of the department. The development of the Indigenous Servicing Strategy has provided the foundation of a planning and monitoring framework to support an improved standard of Indigenous servicing across the department. Reflecting the importance of improving access to mainstream services for Indigenous customers, a central aspect of DHS’ approach is the concept that Indigenous servicing is ‘everyone’s business’. However, while various areas of the department pay specific attention to the accessibility of the services they are able to influence or control, this is not uniformly the case across the organisation. In particular, the approach taken by different business areas and service zones to reflect Indigenous service issues was variable, with some areas demonstrating considered approaches while other areas adopted a more minimalist approach with little explicit consideration of Indigenous matters. There is scope to improve guidance for planning and to develop a stronger quality assurance process in relation to the development of plans by business areas and service zones. DHS collects and maintains data relating to customer usage across a range of service areas. The analysis of usage data can assist departments with respect to assessing the effectiveness of resource allocations and service delivery approaches, as well as informing aspects of policy development. Indigenous usage data, while available, is not regularly extracted for analysis and often does not allow a comparison to be made between non‑Indigenous usage and Indigenous usage of services. Such comparative analysis would contribute to the department’s understanding of whether equitable and accessible services are being provided for Indigenous customers. More specifically, improved data analysis would allow the department to provide front line and program design staff with a better understanding of the composition and needs of their customer base, including the unique needs of particular groups, and allow them to respond to service gaps and needs with targeted resources within operational budgets. Through the Indigenous Servicing Strategy, DHS has established a performance framework to provide internal management information on the department’s performance in providing services to Indigenous customers. The department’s first report on the ISS identified several areas where DHS had performed favourably against performance measures. These included reported increases in the numbers of Indigenous people registered for Medicare and increases in the use of self-service channels. The framework is a positive step in developing a departmental‑wide view of Indigenous usage of key services. A further positive aspect of the performance framework is that performance information is also collected on aspects of DHS’ internal capability. There is however scope to improve the measures used in the framework through the inclusion of baseline information on service usage by Indigenous customers and targets for its improvement. The ANAO has made one recommendation aimed at improving the use of existing data within DHS in order to inform service delivery, service design and to enhance the department’s ability to contribute to policy development

Delivering Public Services: Locality, Learning and Reciprocity in Place Based Practice

Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi-faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is ‘place-based’ solutions. This paper surveys conceptual aspects of this approach. It describes practices in comparable jurisdictions – the UK, the EU and the US. And it explores efforts over the past decade to ‘localise’ Indigenous services. It sketches the governance challenge in migrating from top-down or principal-agent arrangements towards place-based practice. The paper concludes that many of the building blocks for this shift already exist but that these need to be re-oriented around ‘learning’. Funding and other administrative protocols may also ultimately need to be redefined

Improving the early life outcomes of Indigenous children: implementing early childhood development at the local level

One of Australia’s greatest challenges is the elimination of the gap between the developmental outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in the early years of life. This paper reviews existing research and presents strategies to improve early childhood development among Indigenous Australians. Aims of this paper The aims of this paper are to: outline what we know about the size of the gap in early childhood development (ECD) between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the social determinants of ECD establish why localised ECD is an effective means to close the gap in the early childhood years describe the conditions under which localised ECD is more likely to be successful and how to put them into practice describe 3 broad strategies to promote physical, social-emotional and language-cognitive domains of development and reduce developmental risk. To review and synthesise the broad and diverse knowledge relevant to localised ECD, several sources were consulted including peer-reviewed scientific literature, policy documents and reports from governments, international agencies and civil society groups

Funding Indigenous organisations: improving governance performance through innovations in public finance management in remote Australia

This review explains the context and past experience of public finance reform and its effects on governance in remote Indigenous communities. Preamble The poor development standards experienced by Indigenous Australians, especially in places remote from urban areas, are regularly characterised in public and academic discourse as a crisis, with calls for ‘new approaches, new thinking and new commitment’. This paper focuses on the modalities used to manage the conversion of public financing of Indigenous organisations into activities designed to impact on these standards. By modalities we mean the policies and instruments that structure and govern how funding is delivered and aligned with government priorities, including administrative, financing and accountability mechanisms. In this review, block funding was identified for its potential to reform the public finance system to create enabling conditions for enhanced Indigenous governance. Building a devolved accountability framework around the organisation, rather than the centralised grant program, is a sensible alternative to multiple grants and ineffective cycles of grant risk management and attendant accountability measures. As block funding has never been explicitly trialled in Australia, there is a lack of evaluations and other evidence for its efficacy in remote Indigenous contexts. In comparison, the international development literature documents a wealth of experience of the success and shortcoming of generically similar financing modalities. The paper therefore considers the circumstances under which block funding could be usefully adapted to the unique context of remote Indigenous communities in Australia. This review examines the literature and evidence from two principal sources. First and foremost, lessons are distilled and the context defined from a wide array of experience over the past two decades across remote Australia. This is then compared with the evidence from similar contexts abroad; that is, countries and regions that are remote from centres of economic wealth and political power, where populations are generally relatively isolated, scattered and highly diverse. These are often poorly served by administrative and service delivery arrangements due to the impost of great distances and high costs. In these settings, whether abroad or in Australia, local authorities are often referred to as being ‘fragile’ and ‘weak’. Two quite different approaches to handling public finances can be found in these contexts: One is to centralise responsibilities to govern public finances and to institute a host of compliance and reporting obligations on local authorities to manage perceived risks to fiduciary standards. This approach can be an effective way to respond to crises in the short term, but over time, this response tends to corrode local capability and introduce perverse incentives to ‘break the rules’ and ‘game the system’ to respond to local needs and demands. A second, contending approach has developed, particularly in the past decade. This approach shifts responsibility in the direction of local authorities and organisations for a specific range of services and functions. It also negotiates mutually acceptable agreements about the conditions under which public monies can be used and how performance will be jointly assessed. This paper synthesises Australian and international experiences, then suggests avenues for future engagement, including both new experimentation and upscaling of already promising precedents

Indigenous governance bibliography

AIATSIS has compiled this bibliography on Indigenous governance as part of its Indigenous Governance Building: Mapping current and future research and practical resource needs project. It is to be read in conjunction with an AIATSIS bibliography on free, prior and informed consent, engagement and consultation, and other bibliographies relating to various aspects of Indigenous governance which have been included in the following pages and are also available via the project webpage linked above. The term ‘governance’ is wide reaching and it has not been possible to cover all Indigenous governance related topics comprehensively. Within the context of this project governance is broadly defined as a cultural construct where the principles and standards of what constitutes ‘good’, ‘good enough’, ‘strong’, ‘legitimate’, ‘ineffective’, ‘corrupt’ or ‘bad’ governance are informed by culturally-based values, traditions and ideologies; and vary significantly between different societies. There is no end-point goal of ‘perfect’ governance that will eventually be achieved in the future. Rather, governance is adaptive according to context and circumstances. This means it may swing between effectiveness and dysfunction. It is to be found as much in people’s daily self-determined practices, processes and relationships, as it is in visible structures and formal institutions

Generating finance for Indigenous development: Economic realities and innovative options

This is an exploratory ideas paper that sets out to consider how real development futures might be financed and delivered to Indigenous people, especially those residing in rural and remote regions. These are places where there are limited conventional development opportunities—where development is and is going to be costly—but where demographic projections, cultural imperatives and history indicate Indigenous people will be living in 50 to 100 years time. These are also places where a very high proportion of land is owned by Indigenous people, generally under inalienable title, and often (even if tradable) has a low market value. The issue addressed is how can existing institutions and statutory and nonstatutory policy frameworks be used by Indigenous interests to strategically leverage development capital. This issue is especially critical under current circumstances when governments appear reluctant to recognise communal Indigenous rights and interests and market failure, and instead focus increasingly on the individual and the market, in accord with the dominant ideology of development. Simultaneously, there is evidence of a corporate banking retreat from commercially marginal regions. What strategic pressure might Indigenous interests exert to reverse such a trend

Building a sustainable national Indigenous representative body - issues for consideration

Issues of Indigenous disadvantage and dysfunction are before our eyes more frequently and more prominently than ever before. Barely a day goes by without another chilling and heartbreaking story of abuse, violence or neglect; or of demonstrations of the impact of entrenched poverty and despair among our communities. Without proper engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, (Indigenous peoples) governments will struggle in their efforts to make lasting progress in improving the conditions of Indigenous people and in our communities. A National Indigenous Representative Body is a fundamental component of any future action if we are to achieve positive change. At present, there is not a transparent, rigorous process for engaging with Indigenous peoples in determining the policy settings and to hold governments accountable for their performance