This chapter discusses how citizen participation in Australia can be strengthened as a core feature of policymaking and service delivery to enhance policy quality, reinforce public legitimacy, build trust, and promote social cohesion. The chapter starts by providing a high-level mapping of Australia's participation landscape. It then analyses existing governance arrangements and public sector capacities underpinning participation, including opportunities to leverage participation as a strategic tool to inform national-level government priorities. Finally, it sets out avenues for better measuring and amplifying its added value.
Open Government Review of Australia
Strengthening Civic Space and Participation
Abstract
Citizen participation plays an important role in democratic governance. OECD evidence shows that, when designed well and accompanied by a genuine commitment to closing the feedback loop, participation can improve the quality and public acceptance of policy decisions, strengthen government legitimacy, and promote social cohesion (OECD, 2023[1]; OECD, 2024[2]; OECD, 2026[3]; OECD, 2020[4]). It can also help build trust in public institutions, support more adaptive and resilient governance, and enable governments to address complex and contested policy challenges that cannot be resolved by technical expertise alone. As trust in public institutions continues to shift and citizen expectations for engagement beyond the electoral cycle grow, the quality of the government–citizen interface has become a defining feature of democratic resilience across OECD Member countries.
Australia stands out among OECD countries for the breadth of its citizen participation landscape, although formal and structured participation practices are not uniform across government. As discussed in this chapter, current approaches in Australia range from information-sharing and consultation to deliberation, collaboration and partnership, with varying objectives and levels of influence on decision making. Making participation more systematic, meaningful and impactful across the Australian Public Service (APS) requires action across a range of interrelated public governance levers. This chapter focuses on institutionalised forms of participation: the structured mechanisms, processes and arrangements through which public institutions engage citizens and stakeholders in the policy cycle and in service design and delivery. It discusses how participation is organised, governed and experienced at the Commonwealth level, drawing occasionally on subnational examples. It also considers evolving trends, including the digital transition. Drawing on OECD comparative analysis, the chapter identifies strengths and opportunities to further embed citizen participation in policymaking and service design and delivery, in line with the OECD Recommendation on Open Government.
The chapter begins by setting out a working definition of citizen participation and providing a snapshot of the participation landscape across Australia, including how citizens engage, at what level of government, with what intensity, on which issues and at which stages of the policy cycle. It then analyses the governance arrangements underpinning participation, including strategic policy frameworks, institutional mandates, and horizontal and vertical co-ordination mechanisms. Subsequent sections discuss the conditions needed to build a culture of participation across the APS, including capabilities, workforce planning and resourcing, as well as opportunities to launch a national-level participation process on a chosen government priority. Finally, the chapter discusses existing frameworks and instruments available to measure and demonstrate the added value of participation in terms of process quality, immediate outcomes and longer-term impacts, with opportunities to strengthen them. The analysis and recommendations seek to support the Australian Government in embedding citizen participation as a systematic, meaningful and impactful feature of policymaking, service design and delivery at the Commonwealth level, in line with the OECD Recommendation on Open Government.
3.1.1. Defining citizen participation and its role in democratic governance
Citizen and stakeholder participation is one of several ways through which individuals and groups can contribute to shaping public decisions within the broader ecosystem of democratic governance. In representative democracies such as Australia, elections remain the primary mechanism through which citizens express their preferences and hold governments to account. Participation in policymaking, service design and delivery can play a complementary role by enabling more continuous, direct, and issue-specific interactions between citizens and public institutions. As democratic systems evolve and policy challenges become more complex, citizens increasingly expect opportunities to contribute to decisions beyond the electoral cycle. Participation can be a means to deepen and complement representative democracy, offering governments a structured way to draw on citizens’ lived experiences, values, and preferences throughout the policy cycle.
At the same time, citizen participation is not a uniform practice. It spans a range of approaches, from information-sharing and consultation to deliberation, collaboration and partnership, each with different objectives, levels of influence, and implications for decision making. Clarifying what participation is, and what it is not, is critical to ensure shared expectations between governments and the public, and to support consistent and meaningful implementation across the public sector. The OECD provides a definition for citizen participation in the OECD Recommendation on Open Government (Box 3.1).
The OECD Recommendation on Open Government defines open government as “a culture of governance that promotes the principles of transparency, integrity, accountability and citizen and stakeholder participation in support of democracy”. It defines participation as the ways in which citizens and stakeholders can be involved throughout the policy cycle and in service design and delivery. Provisions 8 and 9 call on Adherents to provide fair opportunities for participation across the policy cycle and promote innovative approaches to engagement and co-creation.
Participation is a spectrum, with different levels of involvement and impact
The Recommendation distinguishes between three levels of participation:
Information: a one-way relationship in which government provides information to the public, proactively or on demand, for example through open data platforms or public communication campaigns.
Consultation: a two-way relationship in which citizens and stakeholders provide feedback on a defined issue. Public authorities consider participants’ views but retain responsibility for decisions. Examples include consultations on draft legislation and consultative bodies.
Engagement: a partnership in which citizens and stakeholders actively contribute to shaping the policy process, including setting agendas, developing options and informing decisions, while final responsibility remains with public authorities. Examples include representative deliberative processes and participatory budgeting.
For this chapter, citizens refers broadly to all inhabitants of a place, regardless of immigration status. Stakeholders are interested or affected parties, including organisations from civil society, academia, the media and the private sector. The review focuses primarily on citizens and civil society organisations.
Source: (OECD, 2017[5])
As is the case in many other OECD countries, Australia does not currently have a single, authoritative, or commonly agreed definition of citizen participation at the national level. Nonetheless, the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation presented in Chapter 1 provides the following understanding (Australian Government, 2019[6]):
Engagement: Processes through which public servants and the public interact. These processes seek to unearth and exchange expertise to design, improve and test policy, programmes and services. They may also share information with the public about a policy, programme or service.
Public participation: Two-way communication and collaborative problem solving with the goal of achieving better and more acceptable decisions. It is a form of engagement which assumes active participation. For the purposes of this framework, public participation is mostly deliberative and collaborative forms of engagement with some elements of consultation.
The Framework also sets out a spectrum of engagement as follows:
Share: when government needs to tell the public about a government initiative
Consult: when government needs to gather feedback from the public about a problem or a solution
Deliberate: when government needs help from the public because a problem involves competing values, and requires trade-offs and compromise
Collaborate: when government needs help from the public to find and implement a solution.
The Charter of Partnerships and Engagement (see Chapter 1), published by the Australian Public Service Commission in 2023, takes the above spectrum further to also encompass ‘partnership’ as seen in Figure 3.1.
Source: (Australian Government, 2023[7])
In Australia, the Engagement Institute, formerly known as the International Association for Public Participation Australasia (IAP2 Australasia) also plays a significant part in establishing a common understanding of participation in the country. The IAP2 Spectrum is explicitly referenced in several policy documents and definitions across the Australian public sector, including for instance the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation (Engagement Institute, 2018[8]).
3.1.2. Why participation matters
When done well, citizen participation can build accountability and generate public buy-in on difficult decisions. This can be the case for instance in relation to contentious, value-driven decisions (OECD, 2025[9]; OECD, 2024[2]). The OECD categorises the benefits of participation as intrinsic or instrumental (OECD, 2023[1]):
Intrinsic benefits arise from citizens’ involvement in democratic processes, including a stronger sense of political influence and collective responsibility, greater political awareness and democratic values, and enhanced legitimacy of decision making. These factors can, in turn, strengthen trust in government.
Instrumental benefits concern tangible improvements to policies and their implementation. Participation can improve policy effectiveness by reflecting diverse needs, increase efficiency by helping prevent policy failures and improve resource allocation, and strengthen compliance and public support for policies citizens have helped shape.
Linked to the objectives of this Open Government Review, citizen participation can also serve as an effective lever to strengthen social cohesion. A review of 52 government initiatives across OECD Member and Partner countries found that the success of social cohesion programmes significantly depends on how these are developed and implemented, highlighting co-design and bringing together people from different backgrounds to define common priorities through participation as one of the main levers (Orazani, Reynolds and Osborne, 2023[10]). By bringing people from different backgrounds together around shared challenges, participation can foster mutual understanding and greater recognition of different experiences across communities.
Evidence from participatory budgeting illustrates some of these benefits. In Brazil, sustained participatory budgeting shifted spending towards sanitation and health services and was associated with reductions in infant mortality of close to 20% in municipalities maintaining the practice for more than eight years (Touchton and Wampler, 2013[11]; Gonçalves, 2014[12]). In Seoul, it contributed to more equitable resource redistribution to poorer districts, even where redistribution was not an explicit policy goal (No and Hsueh, 2020[13]). A 2025 cross-national analysis covering 83 countries, including several OECD Members, found government debt risk to be significantly lower where participatory budgeting was in place, suggesting the fiscal discipline benefits of participation extend across institutional contexts (Li and Zhang, 2025[14]). Critically, these returns are not automatic, as positive outcomes depend on careful process design and execution, adequate resource allocation, and sustained institutional commitment.
Australia is characterised by a wide and well-established set of institutionalised opportunities for citizens and stakeholders to participate in public decision making, spanning different stages of the policy cycle and levels of government. Understanding how these opportunities function in practice requires looking beyond the existence of mechanisms to how participation is experienced, who engages, at what stage of decision making, and with what perceived level of influence. This section provides a high-level, non-exhaustive snapshot of the Australian participation landscape, analysing emerging patterns across practices to identify both strengths and structural challenges, considering the results of OECD surveys and interviews conducted with over 350 stakeholders.
3.2.1. How: The ways Australians participate in public decision making in practice
Public institutions in Australia offer a wide range of mechanisms for citizens to participate in public policy- and decision making (Table 3.1). These vary in purpose, level of influence, and degree of institutionalisation. At the more formal end of the spectrum, Australians can participate through direct democratic and representative institutions, including elections, referenda and parliamentary processes. Participation is also embedded in regulatory and policymaking processes, through statutory consultations and regulatory impact assessments. In addition, consultative and advisory mechanisms, including councils and stakeholder forums, provide avenues for ongoing dialogue with government. Digital platforms increasingly support these processes, and more collaborative approaches, such as co-design and deliberative engagement, can enable deeper forms of participation. Targeted and partnership-based arrangements, particularly in relation to First Nations people engagement, illustrate structured forms of shared decision making, although the success of their implementation in practice varies.
While this range of mechanisms reflects a mature participation landscape, OECD evidence suggests there is scope to further align the current offer with evolving citizen and stakeholder expectations. For example, one in three civil society organisations surveyed by the OECD in 2026 expressed interest in more collaborative forms of engagement beyond formal consultation. . APSC data also indicates a desire from the public for more opportunities to be engaged by the Government to shape the design and delivery of public services moving forward (APSC, 2024[15]).
OECD evidence indicates that participation practices are shaped not only by formal frameworks, but also by institutional norms, perceived political risks, and varying levels of confidence among officials regarding how and when to engage citizens. OECD interviews suggest that existing processes can at times be perceived as procedural, “tick-box exercises”, or insufficiently connected to decision making, particularly where participation is initiated late in the policy cycle or framed around narrowly defined options. Contributing factors could include uneven communication of participation opportunities and a lack of clarity around the purpose, scope, and expected influence of individual processes, which can create inconsistent experiences for participants. In practice, OECD interviewees pointed out that participation tends to be driven by policy-specific needs, available resources, and team-level confidence rather than a consistent set of shared expectations. That said, interviews also reflect a genuine commitment among many public officials to strengthen participation practices and explore more collaborative approaches across policy areas.
Source: OECD authors’ own elaboration.
In practice, as discussed in Chapter 1, actual participation rates differ across participation types and the institutionalised mechanisms on offer. The OECD Trust survey data shows that while most Australians report having voted, engagement through other forms remains lower (OECD, 2026[3]). Australians are slightly less likely than the OECD average to report attending a meeting with an elected official or a townhall meeting, at 5% compared with 6%. Participation in public consultations is also slightly lower in Australia, at 7% against the OECD average of 8%. This suggests that despite stronger perceptions of political voice, formal consultation processes may not be used more frequently by Australians than by people in other OECD countries. Australians are also less likely to report signing a petition, at 18% compared with 23% across the OECD. Petition signing is one of the more common non-electoral participation activities across OECD countries, yet it appears less prevalent in Australia.
These differences in participation rates are mirrored in how Australians perceive the influence of different channels (OECD, 2026[3]). Voting in elections is seen as the most influential, with 67% viewing it as moderately or significantly influential, close to the OECD average of 68%, though Australians are less likely to rate it as significantly influential. Voting in a national or state-level referendum ranks second, at 63% against the OECD average of 60%. Running for or holding elected office follows, viewed as influential by 48% of Australians compared with 45% across the OECD. Non-electoral channels are perceived as less influential, consistent with their lower rates of use. For instance, 39% of Australians consider public consultations are influential, in line with the OECD average. Attending a town hall meeting or contacting a politician or government official are each seen as influential by around 37% of Australians, slightly above their OECD averages (35%). Contextually, non-institutionalised forms of participation also vary widely in terms of perceived influence. Volunteering for social or environmental causes is among the more positively perceived, at 44%, though below the OECD average of 47%. Creating or signing a petition is seen as influential by 41%, compared with 44% across the OECD, and participating in a strike is viewed similarly, at 41% against 43%. Taking part in a street protest is viewed as less influential, at 35% compared with 37% across the OECD, with a higher share of Australians reporting it has no influence. Posting or forwarding political content online is perceived as one of the least influential forms, at 32% in both cases.
Barriers to participation can partly explain differences in participation rates (OECD, 2026[3]). When asked what prevents people like them from having a say in what government does, the most commonly reported barrier in Australia is the perception that elected officials do not care, cited by 37% of respondents, though this is below the OECD average of 40%. A lack of information on how to engage with government is reported by 27%, and a lack of opportunities to speak with elected officials or representatives by 25%, both slightly below their OECD averages. Australians are more likely than the OECD average to cite a lack of interest in government affairs, at 24% compared with 21%, one of the few barriers where Australia sits above the OECD. Financial constraints (20%), lack of time (19%), geographical distance (17%), and a lack of networks or organisations (16%) are each reported by a smaller share and are broadly comparable with OECD averages. When asked about barriers to participating in specific mechanisms, non-participation is most often explained by people choosing not to take part or by a lack of awareness (OECD, 2026[3]). Among Australians who did not attend a town hall or public meeting, 35% chose not to and 30% were not aware, both slightly above the OECD averages. Non-participation in public consultations follows a similar pattern, at 32% and 30% respectively. Among those who did not vote in a referendum, lack of awareness is the leading reason, at 22%, and Australians are less likely than the OECD average to report opting out voluntarily.
3.2.2. At what level and with which intensity: Participation opportunities, and the degree to which Australians engage in them, vary across government levels
Australia is a federal system, with different participation standards across the Commonwealth, state and territory, and local government levels. Citizens can engage at all levels of government, although how often and through which mechanisms varies considerably across tiers. No comprehensive dataset on participation opportunities and engagement rates currently exists across Australian government levels, which results in analytical limitations for this section. Addressing this challenge (as discussed in Section 3.5) could help further strengthen participation governance in Australia. In the meantime, some empirical observations can be drawn.
As discussed in Chapter 1, the Commonwealth level records the highest engagement rates in elections and referenda. For instance, the turnout rate for the 2025 federal election was approximately 90%, compared to Western Australia’s local government elections of that same year, which saw a turnout of 29% (WAEC, 2025[19]; AEC, 2025[20]). Differences in participation rates across levels are largely explained by whether compulsory voting requirements apply. Voting is compulsory in federal elections, by-elections and referenda for those on the electoral roll, as well as for state and territory elections, although not uniformly at the local government level (AEC, 2026[21]).
The Commonwealth level also tends to draw higher participation rates in high-profile consultations, or those with a legislative basis for public engagement (e.g. referenda). Royal commissions, which are statutory public inquiries established under the Royal Commissions Act 1902 and which are typically called to examine matters of significant public concern, tend to attract substantial participation. This is partly due to them having dedicated resourcing and gathering sustained media attention. For example, at time of writing, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has gathered around 20 000 submissions. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (2018-2021) collected over 10 000 submissions across 23 public hearings over 99 days, with 641 witnesses interviewed (Australian Department of Health, 2021[22]). Similarly, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the largest royal commission in Australia's history by financial investment, length of operation and volume of evidence, collected an estimated 8 000 submissions and interviewed 1 200 witnesses (Wright, Swain and McPhillips, 2017[23]).
State and local governments, often the most tangible point of interaction between citizens and the state, host a greater number of consultations, public meetings, and deliberative processes than the Commonwealth. Most also have a statutory requirement to consult citizens at the State and/or local level, commonly set out in Local Government Acts (see Annex A). There are currently 537 local councils in Australia (ALGA, 2026[24]). Councils are required to meet at least once a month, and most council meetings are open to the public. This translates to approximately 6 444 council meetings per year. Public attendance varies, and some councils have introduced additional measures to increase transparency of these (e.g. local governments in Western Australia livestream council meetings) and providing pre-meeting request systems for councillors to respond to. Participation opportunities sitting toward the “engagement” end of the OECD spectrum also feature more prominently at the local level, partly due to legislative requirements and proximity to local issues. Victoria’s Local Government Act 2020, for example, is a global reference point for embedding deliberative democracy in key decision making, requiring local councils to inform four major plans: the Community Vision, Council Plans, Financial Plans and Asset Plans (Victorian Legislation, 2020[25]). Meaningful local-level participation practices are widespread across OECD countries, often supported by digital tools. For example, the city of Hamburg in Germany uses the platform DIPAS to engage with citizens through interactive maps (City of Hamburg, 2026[26]).
Some trends nonetheless warrant attention. Municipal amalgamation reforms have made local government progressively less local, and evidence from Australia indicates that as municipalities grow larger, participation tends to decline, with lower rates of voting, candidacy, contact with representatives, and council meeting attendance (McDonnell, 2022[27]). This trend has also been accompanied by a reduction in the number of councillor seats, narrowing the opportunities for citizens to participate as officeholders (McDonnell, 2023[28]). Constrained funding for participation can further limit the reach and quality of engagement at this level.
While participation opportunities in Australia are numerous across levels of government, evidence collected by the OECD shows that they are not always co-ordinated in a way that reflects how citizens and stakeholders experience engagement in practice. For example, interviews conducted by the OECD highlighted that consultations are sometimes run in parallel by different departments and levels of government, with limited visibility across processes. This can result in overlapping requests for input, repeated engagement with the same actors, and “consultation fatigue”, particularly among civil society organisations and representatives of underheard groups. Nevertheless, OECD interviews also pointed to growing awareness across levels of government of the need for more co-ordinated and citizen-centred approaches to participation, including efforts to improve alignment across departments and reduce duplication.
Moreover, OECD interviews suggest that differences in terms of depth and quality of participation opportunities across levels of government are often strongly shaped by political leadership, legislative requirements and institutional culture. Public officials frequently identified ministerial support as a key enabling factor for meaningful participation processes.
3.2.3. Who: Stakeholders tend to engage more than individual citizens across participation opportunities
While Australia's consultation and engagement mechanisms are formally accessible to all, evidence collected by the OECD suggests that organised stakeholders, particularly well-resourced businesses, industry associations, and interest groups, tend to participate more actively in substantive participation opportunities (OECD, 2025[29]). This is consistent with findings from OECD interviews with around 350 government and non-government representatives, which reflected a perception that organised stakeholders can at times leverage participation opportunities to advance specific policy outcomes.1
As further discussed in Section 3.4, Government practices regarding citizen participation in Australia tend to prioritise engagement with organised groups, including peak bodies, industry groups, special interest groups, and primary users of specific services. In addition, existing guidance and requirements for public officials often do not distinguish between citizens and stakeholders. As discussed in Sections 3.3 and 3.4, ambiguity about the purpose of participation (e.g. whether it is understood as an exercise in democracy to involve citizens in the matters that affect them, or as a feedback mechanisms for interest groups) can also lead agencies to underinvest in broader citizen engagement, which can be more time- and resource-intensive than working with organised groups.
These dynamics occur against the backdrop of a broader shift in how Australians organise to make their voices heard. The 2024 Strengthening Democracy Taskforce report identified vibrant civil society as one of Australia's core democratic strengths, while also noting that membership of political, religious, sporting and trade union communities has declined, and that Australians who feel shut out of opportunities such as home ownership and employment, or who experience complex disadvantage, are more likely to feel disillusioned and distrustful (Department of Home Affairs, 2024[30]). ABS data corroborate this: less than one in ten Australians actively participate in civic and political groups, with participation positively associated with educational attainment (ABS, 2025[31]; General Social Survey, 2014[32]). Yet alongside this decline in traditional civic membership, new forms of organising are emerging, often initiated by communities that have historically had limited access to formal participation channels. For instance, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people built their own participation architecture through the process that produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which emerged from 13 regional dialogues and a National Constitutional Convention attended by 250 Indigenous leaders. Place-based collective action has expanded through initiatives such as Logan Together, which brings together governments, services and communities around locally defined priorities. Intergenerational coalitions have also gained some traction, with Foundations for Tomorrow's Australian Parliamentary Group for Future Generations promoting the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill to federal Parliament in February 2025.
These broader patterns are common across OECD Member and Partner countries. In Australia, they can be addressed by how participation is approached in practice within the public sector. According to the results of OECD interviews, officials often rely on organised stakeholders as a primary channel for engagement, as they are easier to reach, have established relationships with government, and are perceived as having the expertise to contribute effectively. In OECD interviews, public officials also reported limited confidence and capability in engaging with underheard groups, including young people, migrants, First Nations people and people with disabilities. Where officials feel under-equipped to engage safely and effectively with underheard communities, organisational risk-aversion can reinforce reliance on familiar institutional actors and established consultation channels.
3.2.4. On what issues: Citizens have different participation interests across policy areas
Like in most other OECD countries, comprehensive data on citizen participation rates across policy areas is not yet available at the Commonwealth level. Qualitative evidence from OECD interviews indicates that while all Commonwealth departments engage citizens and stakeholders in some form, there are important differences in the depth or frequency of participation across policy areas which are often shaped by ministerial priorities and policy-specific legislation (see also Annex A).
APSC data shows that preferences for being involved in the design of government services closely track life-stage needs (APSC, 2024[15]). For instance, younger respondents (18-34) report more interest in having a say on services related to foundational life stages, including employment (48%), health (46%), and education (45%). They also report relatively higher interest participation to inform services related to birth, marriage, and family (32%). The 35-64 age group demonstrated a more balanced distribution, with peaks in health (53%), social welfare (41%), and crisis and hardships (40%). In contrast, older respondents (65+) have the highest levels of interest in having a say on social welfare (60%) and health (56%).
The APSC data also reveals differences in patterns between First Nations and non-First nations cohorts (APSC, 2024[15]). First Nations respondents’ show higher and more evenly distributed interest to participate in the design of public services across most categories provided. The strongest areas of preference included crisis and hardships (45%), education (42%), and employment (41%), followed closely by health (39%), housing (37%), and birth, family, and marriage (37%). In contrast, non–First Nations respondents show a more concentrated pattern, with health (53%) and social welfare (42%) emerging as the priorities. The breadth of First Nations people’s participation interest is consistent with OECD interview findings, which suggest that underheard populations prefer to be engaged across all services shaping their lives, rather than through targeted, domain-specific consultations.
These data points suggest that participation may not always be systematically aligned with either citizen demand or strategic policy priorities. Here, the absence of comprehensive data on actual participation by sector at the Commonwealth level limits an assessment of whether participation opportunities align with the wishes of the population.
These data points suggest that participation may not always be systematically aligned with either citizen demand or strategic policy priorities. Instead, in line with the results of OECD surveys and interviews, the scope, depth and frequency of participation could be shaped by portfolio-level practices, legislative requirements, or ministerial priorities, rather than by a co-ordinated approach to engaging citizens across policy areas.
3.2.5. When: Engaging at the right time in the policy cycle
A non-comprehensive review of citizen consultations featured in each consultation website of all Commonwealth-level Departments in the first half of 2026 suggests that the bulk of participation opportunities arise once draft policies have been developed, late in the formulation stage and shortly before decisions are made, rather than earlier when options are still being defined. There is no unified mandate at the Commonwealth level setting out at which stage of the policy cycle consultations should occur, or how long consultation periods should last. Service delivery and implementation is also increasingly becoming an opportunity for citizens to participate, including for instance through co-design processes in social and healthcare policy domains (e.g. National Disability Insurance Agency Co-design model) and indigenous services (e.g. National Indigenous Australians’ Agency Co-design Group). As seen in Figure 3.2 involving citizens and stakeholders throughout the entire policy cycle can be one way to ensure more meaningful and impactful participation.
Source: OECD authors’ own.
In Australia, citizens and stakeholders appear to have fewer opportunities to shape agenda-setting, policy adoption, and evaluation at the national level compared to other stages of the policy cycle. According to the results of fact-finding interviews in Australia, participation is often used to test, refine, or gather support for pre-defined policy options, rather than to shape policy priorities from the outset. Engaging citizens and stakeholders earlier in key policy decisions was identified across OECD interviews as a priority for strengthening participation, and ensuring participation happens at the right stage of decision making was among the top two areas for improvement flagged by CSOs surveyed by the OECD.
Some notable exceptions to this exist, including the Productivity Commissions’ structured inquiry process, which invites the public to provide inputs as part of the agenda-setting or policy analysis phase (Productivity Commission, 2026[33]). The Secretaries Board may also on occasion surface issues from the community at the agenda-setting stage through Long-term Insights Briefings (Box 3.2). While the policy adoption phase usually includes minimal direct citizens access at the national level (APSA, 2022[34]), referenda are a notable exception, where citizens exercise direct decision-making power.
Long-term Insights Briefings (LTIBs) represent a promising model for embedding citizen voice at the agenda-setting stage of government decisions. Introduced as part of the APS Reform agenda, LTIBs are commissioned by the Secretaries Board once a year and serve to examine specific policy challenges that may affect Australia in the medium and long term (e.g. delivery of public services or use of AI), making analysis of trends, risks, and opportunities widely available and helping the APS understand citizens’ views on long-term challenges.
Citizen participation is built into the preparation of LTIBs design from the outset, with briefings being developed through consultation with citizens on issues that affect them, as well as with experts from the public service, academia, industry, and the not-for-profit sector. The practice continues to evolve but is a legislated activity without specified requirements for participation.
Source: (APSC, 2024[35])
Another recurrent concern identified through OECD interviews related to closing the feedback loop and clearly communicating how public input informed decisions, which is not currently mandated by legislation in Australia. Government and non-government stakeholders alike highlighted that participants are not always informed whether, or how, their contributions shaped final outcomes. Interviewees mostly associated this challenge with organisational risk-aversion, time constraints, unclear institutional expectations, and the absence of systematic requirements to report back to participants. Weak feedback loops can contribute to consultation fatigue and reinforce perceptions that participation processes have limited impact on decision making.
Overall, the snapshot shows that Australia has a developed and institutionally varied participation landscape, characterised by a wide range of participation opportunities across levels of government and a strong tradition of democratic engagement. The following box summarises the main challenges identified.
Australia demonstrates important strengths in areas such as electoral participation, deliberative democracy, co-design practices, regulatory consultations, and innovative engagement approaches at both the local and national levels. The snapshot also points to growing recognition across the public sector that participation can strengthen both policy effectiveness and public trust when it is embedded meaningfully throughout the policy cycle. Some opportunities exist to continue strengthening it:
From fragmentation to a coherent participation ecosystem
Australia's participation landscape is characterised less by an absence of opportunities than by an uneven approach to how participation is governed and embedded across the public sector, with organised stakeholders remaining the most active participants and co-ordination across departments and levels of government offering a clear avenue for improvement. Some variation in approach is legitimate, as participation serves different purposes across government and can reasonably call for different methods. In practice, however, this variation appears shaped more by ministerial priorities, operational constraints and legislative requirements than by a considered matching of method to purpose. Section 3.3 builds on this observation, exploring how greater co-ordination and a more cohesive strategic framework could support more deliberate, purpose-oriented decisions on how and when to engage.
Building a culture of participation: capabilities and incentives to make participation a routine part of governing
The snapshot points to important strengths in areas such as regulatory consultation and deliberative democracy, where capabilities and incentives have been developed at both national and subnational level. Overall, however, participation still tends to concentrate at the later stages of policy formulation, and the capacity and confidence of individual teams, more than a lack of will, appears to shape how and when citizens are engaged, with engagement of under-heard groups a continuing area for growth. Section 3.4 responds to this by examining how public sector capability, confidence and incentives can be strengthened so that engaging citizens earlier and more broadly becomes a systematic feature of policymaking rather than a discretionary practice.
Measuring and demonstrating the added value of participation
The snapshot notes that no comprehensive dataset exists on participation opportunities or engagement rates across government levels or policy areas, which limits any assessment of whether participation aligns with citizen demand or strategic priorities, and that weak feedback loops leave participants unsure whether or how their input shaped decisions. This is a persistent challenge also reflected in perceptions that consultations carry limited influence. Institutionalising feedback mechanisms and better measuring and demonstrating the value add of participation could help it be consistently understood, and experienced, as a core function of policymaking rather than an optional practice. Section 3.5 sets out how stronger monitoring, evaluation and reporting infrastructure could help Australia demonstrate participation's process quality, outputs and longer-term impact, and close the loop with citizens more systematically.
Australia demonstrates important strengths in areas such as electoral participation, deliberative democracy, co-design practices, regulatory consultations, and innovative engagement approaches at both the local and national levels. The snapshot also points to growing recognition across the public sector that participation can strengthen both policy effectiveness and public trust when it is embedded meaningfully throughout the policy cycle.
At the same time, as seen above and in following sections, Australia's participation landscape is characterised less by an absence of opportunities than by an uneven approach to how participation is governed, experienced and embedded across the public sector, with opportunities to increase its impact, meaningfulness and effectiveness. The current offer does not always meet public expectations in terms of coherence, visibility, timing and perceived influence on decision making. Participation is still often treated as an optional or discretionary practice rather than a systematic feature of policymaking, and tends to concentrate at the later stages of policy formulation, with fewer opportunities elsewhere in the policy cycle. Some variation in approach is legitimate, as participation serves different purposes across government, from policy development and implementation to service delivery, regulatory administration and continuous improvement, and these objectives can reasonably call for different methods. In practice, however, the variation observed appears driven less by a considered matching of method to purpose than by ministerial priorities, operational constraints, legislative requirements, and the capacity and confidence of individual teams. A more cohesive participation approach, discussed further below, could promote a more deliberate and purpose-oriented judgement on the selection of participation methods. Organised stakeholders remain the most active participants, while engagement with under-heard groups and the closing of feedback loops emerge as persistent challenges.
These patterns suggest opportunities to further strengthen governance for participation by promoting greater co-ordination across departments and levels of government, clarifying the purpose and expected influence of participation processes, embedding earlier and more strategic engagement across the policy cycle, building public sector capability and confidence to engage with the public, and institutionalising feedback mechanisms so that participation is consistently understood as a core function of policymaking.
Australia has established a range of frameworks, institutions and mechanisms that directly promote or support citizen participation, including the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation and Closing the Gap. Government bodies at all levels contribute to the participation agenda, although efforts have at times evolved in parallel and without shared definitions or standards. Stronger political ownership, clearer strategic guidance and a central co-ordinating function could help build a more coherent, whole-of-government approach.
Policy recommendations
To strengthen government efficiency, reduce duplication and consultation fatigue, improve accountability for participation outcomes, and build more coherent and trusted interactions between citizens and the public sector, the Australian Government could consider to:
Formally articulate citizen participation as a priority for all parts of government through high-level political and administrative leadership mechanisms, including Ministerial statements, Secretaries Board endorsement, and integration into senior public service leadership expectations.
Strengthen coherence across existing participation frameworks by clarifying shared definitions, minimum expectations, institutional responsibilities, and linkages between current strategies, guidance, and reform agendas.
Consider establishing a Centre for Excellence on Participation or policy co-ordination function to support piloting innovation, cross-government co-ordination, guidance, capacity building, institutional learning, and communities of practice on participation. Identify where such a function could most effectively sit within government and the level of resourcing required.
Build horizontal and vertical co-ordination on participation by creating dedicated cross-government co-ordination mechanisms, scaling existing good practices (e.g. partnership stocktakes and community liaison models), and strengthening collaboration between Commonwealth, state, territory, and local governments.
Integrate digital participation more systematically into participation governance frameworks.
Ensuring that citizen participation meaningfully informs public decision making is a matter of how the government and the public sector at large organise it as a core governance function. This requires moving towards a systemic approach, where citizen participation is planned, co-ordinated, embedded and evaluated across the entire policy cycle in a proportionate way.
This section examines how citizen participation is governed in Australia, focusing on the presence of clear institutional leadership and mandates, the effectiveness of co-ordination mechanisms across government, and the extent to which existing strategic frameworks provide coherent and actionable guidance for participation in practice.
3.3.1. Advancing a coherent commitment to citizen participation across government
When ministers and elected officials publicly champion participation, it signals to the public service that engaging citizens is a genuine government priority and gives officials the authority and confidence to invest in it (OECD, 2020[36]; OECD, 2022[37]). Academic research based on interviews with 51 senior national ministers across Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States shows that political leaders tend to value public input when it informs their decisions, connects them to everyday people and tests advice from other sources (Hendriks and Lees-Marshment, 2019[38]). The OECD’s work on deliberative democracy also suggests when elected officials are confident in the rigour of participation methodology, see participation as producing credible and actionable outputs, and have meaningful opportunities to engage directly with citizens, they are more likely to see its value and take ownership of citizens’ recommendations (OECD, 2020[4]). Australian case study evidence reinforces this finding, showing that structured deliberative engagement can strengthen elected members' representative capacities by connecting them more directly with constituents and grounding their decisions in considered public views (Alnemr et al., 2023[39]).
Across interviews with government officials and non-government representatives from civil society organisations and academia in Australia, political will emerged as one of the strongest drivers for strengthening participation. Public officials consistently reported that, absent a clear signal from a minister or senior leader, they do not always feel confident in launching a new participation process, even where guidance, capability and tools are available (see Section 3.4). Interviewees attributed this to competing pressures to deliver on government agendas at pace, as well as a limited appreciation of the value of participation as a complement, rather than an alternative, to representative democracy. More broadly, interviewees underlined that building central ownership of the participation agenda would require greater clarity at the political level on the added value of engaging citizens. Notably, this applied even where participation is legally mandated (see Annex): OECD interviews found that the quality and meaningfulness of such processes varied according to the degree of political and senior-level ownership, suggesting that legal mandates alone cannot substitute for genuine institutional commitment. This finding is consistent with available evidence that sustained political commitment at the highest level is a key condition for embedding participation in public decision making (OECD, 2022[37]; Alnemr et al., 2023[39]).
To translate these findings into action, the Australian Government could take several mutually reinforcing steps to signal durable, high-level political commitment to citizen participation. An option would be to explicitly articulate participation as a government priority through a high-level political statement, for instance via a statement of expectations from the Prime Minister, co-signed by the Minister for the Public Service, or a formal endorsement by the Secretaries Board as has been the case previously in Canada. Such a statement could affirm that meaningful citizen and stakeholder participation is a core feature of policymaking, service design and delivery at the Commonwealth level. A second option would be to anchor participation within existing high-profile government priorities and broader efforts to strengthen democratic resilience. Over the long term, embedding participation expectations within the leadership architecture of the public service (e.g. Secretaries Charter of Leadership Behaviours) could help ensure top-level signalling on participation remains consistent among senior officials.
Ministerial Mandate Letters in Canada
Since 2015, the Government of Canada used ministerial mandate letters to signal political commitment to public participation at the highest level of government:
Introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the letters were made publicly available and included explicit engagement expectations as a standard accountability mechanism for every minister.
Each letter held ministers accountable for “meaningful engagement” with Parliament, the public service, civil society, and Canadians broadly, including business, labour, the non-profit sector, and Indigenous partners.
In some cases, participation commitments were tied to concrete policy deliverables, reinforcing the expectation that engagement should inform decision making.
Cabinet Statement on citizen participation in the United Kingdom
In July 2026, the United Kingdom Government used its “Rewiring the State” Cabinet Statement to signal political commitment to shifting power closer to citizens:
It set out a major transfer of powers, resources and functions from central government to elected mayors and local authorities across England, on the premise that local leaders are better placed to connect public opinion and civil society to policy making.
It committed to replacing consultation by default with new and more active forms of public participation.
This included reviewing where statutory duties to consult had become performative, and how the public could instead be brought more directly into the policy-making process.
3.3.2. Setting a strategic framework for citizen participation to drive a co-ordinated approach
A national strategic framework that allocates roles and responsibilities, sets shared minimum standards, and defines common goals with measurable indicators (OECD, 2023[42]; OECD, forthcoming[43]) can help align efforts across government, prevent duplication, enable economies of scale, and support accountability for implementation, while providing a shared reference point for line departments. In practice, most OECD countries (87%) have developed national policy documents on participation, often through Open Government Partnership (OGP) Action Plans, or as part of broader open government strategies (OECD, 2023[1]).
In Australia, several cross-government frameworks guide policymakers regarding the planning and implementation of citizen participation exercises, including the Australian Public Service Framework for Engagement and Participation, the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, and the Third OGP National Action Plan (Box 3.5). The APS Framework for Engagement and Participation and the more recent Charter of Partnerships and Engagement set an aspirational direction for participation across the public service. The National Agreement on Closing the Gap establishes participation as a formal governance commitment and represents Australia's most ambitious effort to institutionalise participation requirements across government, co-designed with First Nations people.
Australian Public Service Framework for Engagement and Participation
Endorsed by the APS Secretaries Board in 2019, it provides a whole-of-government approach to involving citizens and stakeholders in policymaking.
Sets out three principles (listen, be genuine, be open) and four ways to engage (Share, Consult, Deliberate, Collaborate).
Establishes minimum standards for planning, implementing and learning from consultations, supported by tools such as A Guide to the Right Engagement and the Open Dialogue Roadmap.
Charter of Partnerships and Engagement
Published by the APSC in December 2023, it reflects a more ambitious iteration of Australia's whole-of-government approach to engagement.
Sets out six aspirational principles (be open, responsive, transparent, accountable, informed and collaborative) and aims to put people and business at the centre of policy, in line with the APS Reform Agenda.
Recognises that engagement and partnership exist on a spectrum defined by how far decision making is shared, and is supported by Good Practice Guidance and an Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment tool.
The National Agreement on Closing the Gap (‘Closing the Gap’)
Signed in 2020 by the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations (Coalition of Peaks), the Australian Government, all state and territory governments, and the Australian Local Government Association, it is the first national agreement of its kind developed in partnership across government.
Australia's clearest example of institutionalising participation requirements with binding commitments and independent accountability mechanisms; Priority Reform One (formal partnerships and shared decision making) is the most directly relevant, establishing policy and place-based partnerships with minimum requirements on accountability, representativeness and transparency. Priority Reform Three is also relevant, calling for the improvement of engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as part of reform commitments on how the public sector operates. Accountability mechanisms (i.e. Annual Reports, stocktakes) are required from all signatories. While the government compiles information on partnerships through a dedicated public stocktake, there is no requirement to report on participation practices to inform policies.
The Productivity Commission's 2024 review found limited progress in fully realising these commitments, pointing to the need to meet binding commitments with sustained shifts in institutional culture.
Australia's Third OGP National Action Plan (NAP3, 2024-2025)
Delivered eight commitments across six ministerial portfolios to improve participation in government, strengthen government and corporate sector integrity, and enhance Australia's democratic processes.
Commitment Two (Improve Public Participation of Youth in Government) was the most directly relevant to participation; the remaining seven focused on transparency, integrity and accountability. While NAPs are not purposed to drive whole of government priorities, they can be useful mechanisms to promote concrete initiatives on participation. Its co-creation process embeds a participation mechanism, the Open Government Forum, to ensure civil society can inform priority areas.
Australia’s Fourth Open Government Forum is supporting the development of the Fourth Action Plan. The Forum is composed of six government members and six civil society members.
In addition to the whole of government frameworks discussed in Box 3.5 and Chapter 1, some government departments at the Commonwealth level integrate citizen participation as part of their own strategies and frameworks on an ad hoc basis (Box 3.6). For example, the Office for Youth's Engage! Strategy and Australia's Disability Strategy 2021-2031 stand out for establishing dedicated co-ordination bodies, advisory groups, public reporting requirements and evaluation indicators tied to participation outcomes. Beyond such strategies, many agencies also maintain ongoing participation infrastructure, including advisory forums and stewardship arrangements, which can support participation as a sustained function.
Youth Engage! Strategy – Office for Youth in the Australian Department of Education: Launched in 2024, by the Office for Youth in the Australian Department of Education, the Strategy sets out three broad priority areas, including recognising and listening to young people, empowering young people to champion their issues and engage with government, and supporting government to work with young people. It includes nine measures to track progress through annual reports, which are informed by young people’s perspectives. The Strategy is led and co-ordinated by the Office for Youth, and enables the cross-government co-ordination of youth priorities. It embeds participation mechanisms (e.g. Youth Advisory Groups) across departments to inform relevant policy priorities.
First Nations Clean Energy Strategy 2024-2030: Released in December 2024 and co-sponsored by the Minister for Energy and Climate Change and the Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Strategy is a five-year national framework designed to guide collaboration between governments, industry and First Nations community members in Australia's clean energy transition. Its core participation commitment is that First Nations people should self-determine how they lead, participate in and benefit from the clean energy transformation, rather than being consulted as recipients of decisions made elsewhere. The Strategy was itself co-developed through this principle: First Nations people, industry and government leaders drove its design through roundtables and consultations. The Strategy is a priority action under the National Energy Transformation Partnership, is backed by USD 70 million over three years from 2025-2026 to establish First Nations Clean Energy Futures Implementation and Grants Programs, and includes monitoring and reporting commitments.
Australia's Disability Strategy 2021-2031: This Strategy is the national disability policy framework agreed by all levels of Australian government, setting out a 10-year plan to improve the lives of Australians with disability. A key objective of the Strategy is that people with disability can participate equally in the social, economic, cultural and civic life of their communities. To support this objective, a Guide to Applying Australia's Disability Strategy and Good Practice Guidelines for Engaging with People with Disability have been developed. The Strategy's governance arrangements include a dedicated Advisory Council, comprising disability champions and state and territory representatives, to help guide policy priorities and implementation. Regular reporting against the Outcomes Framework, biennial implementation reports and independent evaluations help track progress and identify areas for improvement.
At the State and Territory level, participation priorities are often embedded through sectoral plans (e.g. South Australia’s Community Engagement Charter, Western Australian Multicultural Policy Framework) or guidelines (e.g. Queensland’s Community Engagement Guidelines) to support the implementation of legislative requirements on participation. Participation priorities are also embedded through portfolio-specific strategies. In Western Australia, for example, the Youth portfolio within the Department of Communities developed the Youth Action Plan 2024-2027 Koorlangka Bidi through one of the most extensive youth consultation processes undertaken in the state, engaging over 2 000 young people as co-designers of the process and closing the feedback loop by testing draft priorities with participants and reporting annually on implementation (Government of Western Australia, 2024[50]). The State of Victoria (Box 3.7) stands out as a good practice example in this regard. Victoria's Public Engagement Framework 2021-2025 is one of the most comprehensive state-level policy documents on citizen participation available internationally.
Victoria Public Engagement Framework 2021-2025
The State of Victoria has one of the most comprehensive whole-of-state participation frameworks of all Australian states. It articulates a clear vision for participation, sets out definitions with examples of the different levels of participation, and outlines defined outcomes and benefits of participation for the public and government. It also outlines all relevant legal frameworks that are relevant to the framework and establishes six engagement principles (meaningful, representative, transparent, informed, accountable and valuable) with good practice examples under each. It also articulates practical guidelines on how to conduct a participation process, from defining the purpose of participation through delivering, reporting on and evaluating it. The Framework also provides an evaluation framework, where each broader outcome includes defined success indicators and measures. Victoria illustrates the quality of framework design rather than of implementation. The Victorian Legislative Council's Inquiry into Community Consultation Practices (2026) however found that the Framework is not consistently applied, with engagement at times rushed, narrowly framed or poorly communicated. The Inquiry recommends, among others, the mandatory application of the Framework and public reporting on adherence. This gap between a well-designed framework and its uneven application reflects a broader theme of this chapter, namely that structural conditions require a supporting culture and incentives to translate into practice.
The analysis shows that Australia has built well developed strategic policy frameworks for citizen participation. However, evidence also suggests that existing instruments have evolved largely in parallel, with varying definitions of participation, and inconsistent and fragmented expectations regarding implementation, monitoring and accountability. Guidance on “what good practice looks like” currently varies across frameworks in terms of who should be engaged (e.g. citizens or stakeholders), why (e.g. to improve services, strengthen social cohesion), at what stage of the policy cycle, and what mechanisms are available to do so. Opportunities also exist to clarify responsibilities and cross-reference commitments across frameworks.
Moving forward, Australia could strengthen the cohesiveness of its participation ecosystem by issuing practical guidance from the APSC that bridges existing frameworks and linking these to existing practical tools. The guidance could clarify how they relate to one another, set out shared definitions, identify minimum expectations for participation, and clarify who is responsible for meeting such expectations across the public sector. Strengthening the visibility of existing frameworks across the public sector through dedicated communication and capacity building efforts could also be envisaged.
In addition, countries facing similar challenges have used overarching participation strategies or policies as a way to bring together dispersed frameworks, clarify expectations, and support more consistent implementation across government. In the medium-term, the APSC could engage with relevant APS entities with significant citizen and community engagement responsibilities, including agencies serving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, regional and remote communities, multicultural communities, people with disability and older Australians to identify demand across agencies for developing a whole-of-government policy or strategy for citizen and stakeholder participation. This could be done either as part of a broader agenda (e.g. on social cohesion or strengthening democracy), or as a standalone instrument following the Finnish example (Box 3.8).
The National Programme to Promote Democracy and Participation, adopted in 2025 and led by Finland’s Ministry of Justice, is a cross-government plan containing 15 policy goals and key measures to promote democracy and participation. Particular objectives include improving voter turnout, increasing the participation of children and young people, and strengthening civic education. The Ministry of Justice convened a cross-administrative working group to prepare the programme and co-ordinate its implementation across government ministries. Consultations with citizens, including young people, also informed the Programme.
A post-adoption implementation plan was prepared by the Ministry of Justice to allocate ministry-specific responsibilities and clear goals. The programme is also informed by Finland's democracy indicators system, which includes pre-existing data tools to track the state of democracy over time. The implementation plan sets out concrete measures and a timetable and responsible ministries. Its progress is monitored by a working group appointed by the Ministry of Justice. The programme does not have a dedicated budget; implementation is carried out through existing administrative resources and sectoral funding. As of June 2026, implementation is progressing as expected, with most measures completed or underway. Key achievements include increased voter participation, strengthened youth engagement, and the introduction of new participatory tools such as citizens' panels, dialogues and digital platforms.
3.3.3. Anchoring participation within the machinery of government
Institutional responsibilities for citizen and stakeholder participation differ across OECD Member and partner countries (OECD, 2023[1]). In most cases, responsibilities for citizen and stakeholder participation are dispersed, with several offices sharing parts of the mandate. Across the OECD, 81% of Member countries including Australia have offices that provide support for line ministries participation efforts, 67% of them had an office that provides digital engagement support, and 84% have an office that supports strengthening government–civil society relations (OECD, 2023[1]).
As is the case in other OECD countries, responsibilities for citizen participation in Australia are shared across a range of institutions (Table 3.2). At the centre, several entities play complementary roles. The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) provides overarching guidance on public service capability and engagement practices, including through developing frameworks and overseeing reform agendas (see also Chapter 1). The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) plays a central co-ordinating role on whole-of-government priorities, including steering Closing the Gap and engagement with First Nations people. Functional responsibilities are also distributed across specialised bodies, such as the Office of Impact Analysis, which oversees consultation requirements in regulatory processes, and the Digital Transformation Agency, which support digital transformation across the APS, including by providing procurement paths for digital tools. At the same time, as is common practice across the OECD, line departments retain primary responsibility for designing and implementing participation processes within their respective policy domains.
Source: OECD authors own elaboration based on 2026 OECD Open Government Survey to Australia.
This distribution of roles between different institutions enables flexibility and sector-specific approaches, but also contributes to a governance landscape where leadership, standards and practices are dispersed across multiple actors. International examples show that having a dedicated unit which centralises advice, co-ordination, capacity building, and policy development on citizen participation can reduce ambiguity, streamline spending, and enhance the quality of participation processes (Box 3.9).
Several lighter-touch alternatives could also address this fragmentation. PM&C could strengthen its existing co-ordination role. Common standards could be developed without creating a dedicated unit. The APSC's current mandate could be expanded to cover cross-agency co-ordination. Each of these options could offer marginal improvements. However, none would resolve the underlying challenge. Co-ordination would remain a secondary function within institutions whose core mandates lie elsewhere. This limits the time and resourcing that can be dedicated to it. It also means there is no single actor accountable for tracking practice, building capacity, and driving consistency across government. Without a dedicated capability, this configuration risks reproducing the current dispersion of leadership and standards it is intended to fix.
In line with international good practice, Australia could therefore consider setting up a Centre of Excellence on Participation. The Centre, composed of 3-7 officials from different agencies across the APS dedicating full- or part-time capacity to it, could formalise existing informal collaboration channels with other ministries and agencies leading different participation priorities. The Centre could include working groups leading different participation workstreams (e.g. digital participation, engagement with CSOs, measuring and reporting on the impact of participation) to enable cross-learning. Figure 3.3 provides a proposed approach on how a Centre for Excellence on Participation could be set up in Australia.
A number of initiatives already underway across Australia's public administration illustrate the kind of globally significant, distinctive work the Centre could draw together and amplify. The APSC, together with ARDN, is developing measures of civic engagement with public services, including a forthcoming TAPS survey module (due to be published in August 2026). This is an opportunity for the Centre to help translate emerging measurement approaches into a more systematic evidence base on participation outcomes. The APS Academy also continues to identify opportunities to partner with agencies and leading practitioners to strengthen Engagement and Partnership Craft across the APS, including through applied learning opportunities. The Office for Social Cohesion's work supporting agencies to test and learn through small-scale experiments in engagement methods, as an enabling condition for civic space and social cohesion, provides a model of iterative practice that the Centre could help embed more widely.
Source: OECD authors own elaboration.
France’s Interministerial Centre for Citizen Participation (CIPC)
Established in 2019 within the Inter-ministerial Directorate on Public Transformation to provide support, advice and expertise on citizen participation to all ministries and state services.
Fulfils three core functions: advising administrations on the design and follow-up of participatory processes; building public sector capacity through guides, courses and training; and managing a cross-government network of participation champions who develop a culture of participation in their ministries and feed into the state's central participation platform.
Has developed a substantial operational presence, supporting 17 of the 22 national participatory processes launched between 2022 and 2023 and engaging over 400 000 citizens.
Evaluations show a 60% improvement in the methodological quality of processes when the CIPC is involved, including systematic publication of participation mandates, recruitment by random selection, and longer consultation periods. The CIPC has led the development of citizen participation trainings provided through the French Public Transformation Campus and developed an internal pool of facilitators to strengthen government resources in this area.
New Zealand’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) policy project team
Centralises resources to support good practice policymaking, providing tools to identify the appropriate level of participation, select engagement methods, and engage better with under-heard communities.1
Developed a Policy Community Engagement Tool in direct response to a recommendation of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch attack.
Runs practical capacity-building opportunities and supports a Cross-Government Stakeholder Community of Practice for officials to share expertise, alongside published case studies and survey evidence on what improves participation practices.
Brazil's Secretaria Nacional de Participação Social (SNPS)
Located within the General Secretariat of the Presidency, placing citizen participation at the centre of government. Established in 2023, it proposes and articulates participation mechanisms across the federal administration, co-ordinates national policy conferences, and acts as a centre of expertise conducting studies, research and training.
Operates within a broader architecture of two 2023 decrees: the Council for Social Participation, chaired by the President with 68 civil society representatives, and the Inter-ministerial Social Participation System connecting participation units in each ministry.
Manages Brasil Participativo, the federal digital platform. Its first major application, the participatory 2024-2027 Plano Plurianual, mobilised 1.4 million citizens online and over 35 000 in plenaries across all 27 states, generating more than 8 200 proposals.
Has since established social participation forums in every state, involving over 1 100 civil society organisations, and launched the Governo do Brasil na Rua programme, which brings public services and spaces for dialogue directly into local territories.
1. New Zealand’s range of participation is aligned with the International Association for Public Participation, which classifies the different types of engagement as such: Informing: Providing information to help understand issues and solutions. Consulting: Obtaining public feedback on analysis and decisions. Involving: Working directly with the public to understand their concerns and aspirations. Collaborating: Partnering with the public in the design or decision-making process. Empowering: Placing decision making in the hands of the public.
3.3.4. Strengthening co-ordination and coherence of participation practices across government
Co-ordination among public institutions within and across levels of governance is one of the core systemic challenges for meaningful citizen participation in OECD Member and Partner countries (OECD, 2024[2]). A well co-ordinated and coherent citizen participation infrastructure can be a lever to promoting economies of scale, reducing inefficiencies and duplication, and promoting institutional learning (Vivier and Sanchez-Betancourt, 2023[56]; Scott and Gong, 2021[57]; OECD, 2020[4]).
Available data from Australia shows that lack of co-ordination can affect how participation is experienced by citizens: only 63% of citizens report clarity on how to provide feedback on a government service (APSC, 2024[35]), while just 39% believe that their participation in a public consultation would have an influence in the final decision (OECD, 2026[3]). Establishing co-ordination instruments that structure how public institutions interact with citizens and stakeholders, that communicate clearly and accessibly on opportunities to participate, and that set minimum expectations for the quality and consistency of these interactions, can therefore help make participation more predictable and meaningful for both citizens and the public sector.
Strengthening horizontal co-ordination across Commonwealth-level public institutions
In Australia, the Thodey Review of the APS in 2019 identified the absence of strong horizontal co-ordination (i.e. co-ordination between national-level government bodies, as opposed to between government levels) as a persistent feature of Commonwealth governance, with consequences on the quality and consistency of citizen participation (Thodey, 2019[58]). Indeed, existing inter-governmental forums (e.g. National Cabinet, Secretaries Board) do not appear to have a specific focus on streamlining and co-ordinating participation practice. Cross co-ordination challenges were reflected also through OECD interview findings, which pointed to limited cross-government co-ordination as a key driver of engagement fatigue. This fatigue appears to be most acutely felt by organisations working with under-represented groups, who reported being repeatedly consulted by different departments and used as proxies in lieu of direct engagement with underheard voices, as discussed in the snapshot (Section 3.2).
Australia nonetheless has examples of co-ordination instruments on citizen and stakeholder participation practices. Notably, under the Closing the Gap architecture, the 2024 Commonwealth Partnership Stocktake provides a government-wide monitoring instrument requiring Commonwealth departments to report on the status of their partnership arrangements with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) (NIAA, 2024[59]). The Stocktake helps harmonise how departments approach shared decision making with First Nations people and offers First Nations partners a clearer view of what to expect from government across portfolios. Similarly, ACCOs Commissioning Frameworks structure how ACCOs work with government to design and deliver services to their communities, offering an example of how governments can move from consultation towards power-sharing in service design and delivery. These instruments should be understood as evolving rather than settled. First Nations organisations and the Productivity Commission have noted that implementation of the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms has been uneven, and that government has often fallen short of the genuine-shared decision making the framework envisages. The instruments above therefore illustrate promising mechanisms and directions of travel, rather than fully realised models of power-sharing.
Co-ordination also takes place through more operational and relational mechanisms, such as the Department of Home Affairs' Community Liaison Officers (CLOs), an on-the-ground network comprising 50 departmental officers deployed across five regional community engagement teams covering all states and territories. CLOs build and maintain relationships with a wide range of cultural, ethnic and faith-based communities through regular engagement, reaching over 1 200 community stakeholders between July 2024 and May 2025, via in-person, one-on-one and group formats. Beyond relationship-building, the network identifies barriers to participation, connects communities with information and services, and channels community voices and feedback into government policies and programmes, with a centralised CLO database consolidating community feedback across the network (Department of Home Affairs, 2026[60]).
In adjacent domains, the Commonwealth has demonstrated sophisticated whole-of-government co-ordination instruments reflecting strong co-ordination capacity around national priorities, which could be extended to citizen participation practices. For instance, the Australian Government Crisis Management Framework, provides scalable mechanisms (e.g. the National Coordination Mechanism) for rapidly convening Commonwealth agencies, states and territories, industry and civil society around shared priorities and synchronised action (PM&C, 2026[61]). In addition, the government's response to the 2024 Independent Review of Commonwealth Funding for Strategic Policy Work introduced centrally agreed annual priorities, a government-wide register of engagement arrangements and single departmental gateways for co-ordinating relations with an external sector (PM&C, 2024[62]).
The Government of Australia also co-ordinates citizen and stakeholder participation in service delivery. This is done through Services Australia, which co-ordinates 6 engagement forums connecting a range of CSOs. The National Multicultural Advisory Group (NMAG) is the agency’s primary engagement forum with national peak bodies and grassroots service providers of relevance. NMAG supports the agency to be responsive to the various and evolving needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) customers and communities. Services Australia reports back to CSOs how the feedback provided on these forums is considered as a standing practice. For instance, in 2024 the NMAG held a co-design workshop exploring how the agency could improve service delivery to newly arrived refugees. Over the following 12 months, the agency reported back to NMAG members on how their feedback was applied, including in areas where suggestions could not be implemented and why.
Beyond formal instruments and operational networks, evidence from OECD countries suggests that horizontal co-ordination on participation also depends on practitioner-level mechanisms that connect officials working on similar challenges. Communities of practice (CoPs), which bring public officials together around shared problems to enable peer-to-peer exchange and build institutional knowledge, are increasingly used in government to support policy learning, foster innovation, address ‘wicked issues’ that may require cross-government co-operation, and address inconsistencies in implementation (Hanson, 2023[63]) (Smith, 2016[64]). Applied to citizen participation, a CoP of practitioners working across Australian agencies, sharing what worked in consultation design, what confused citizens about the scope of their influence, or how feedback was communicated back to participants, could directly address the opportunities emerging during the OECD fact-finding mission. New Zealand offers a relevant model in this regard, pairing a national engagement practitioner network with whole-of-government guidance such as the Policy Community Engagement Tool (Box 3.10). For such mechanisms to deliver impact, they typically require genuine institutional backing, practical resources, alignment with formal organisational objectives, and clear recognition.
Building on its solid foundations, the Australian Government could also consider strengthening horizontal co-ordination on citizen participation by mandating a designated central body (e.g. the Centre for Excellence illustrated in Figure 3.3) to lead cross-government efforts in this area by convening the community of practice or preparing briefings for discussion in established cross-government co-ordination structures (e.g. Secretaries Board). Building on existing good practices, this could also include developing a whole-of-government participation stocktake modelled on the Commonwealth Partnership Stocktake to track and report annually on participation efforts. Scaling relational co-ordination mechanisms (e.g. CLO Network) to other underheard population groups and policy areas could also be envisaged.
In New Zealand a Cross Government Stakeholder Community of Practice set up by Inland Revenue, enables all government agencies to engage in group exchange to strengthen citizen and stakeholder participation. Teams across government learn from each other by sharing expertise, tools, and experiences. The Community of Practice provides an opportunity to collaborate, have visibility on cross-agency engagement initiatives and improve capabilities and soft skills. It runs in-person and online events showcasing support agencies can access for running participatory processes. Events showcase skills and practices for engaging with Māori communities, and cover topics such as ‘Trust and truth in a digital world’. The community of practice is a mechanism to share initiatives that require outreach to communities such as surveys of former refugees and their families to find information to inform work so future refugee communities can be better supported. The community of practice runs an online hub for members to share meeting recordings, participatory resources and contact details of all members.
Strengthening vertical co-ordination between Commonwealth-level public institutions and the subnational level
State, territory, and local governments not only conduct most public consultations but also benefit from clear lines of responsibility and purpose-built legislative frameworks designed explicitly to support participation. Local councils in particular play a central role, with most required by law to adopt community consultation frameworks across planning, budgeting, and service delivery. Table 3.3 maps actors and responsibilities across the state and local levels in Australia.
Source: OECD authors own elaboration based on 2026 OECD Open Government Survey to Australia.
At the subnational level, Local Government Associations play a significant co-ordination role in the participation ecosystem. Bodies such as the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) and the Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA) support councils in building participation capacities, run communities of practice for local practitioners, and feed local perspectives into state and national policy processes (MAV, 2026[67]; WALGA, 2026[68]). They also engage in emerging areas of participation governance, including partnerships with academic institutions to pilot innovations. However, they largely operate outside of national participation governance arrangements or frameworks, with the exception of recent initiatives by the Department of Home Affairs to connecting sectors and jurisdictions in support of place-based efforts to counter social fragmentation and strengthen social cohesion.
OECD interviews highlighted a widespread perception among subnational actors that national priorities are set without adequate regard for local realities, capacities, or existing engagement relationships. Precedents for structured collaboration across levels of government nonetheless exist in specific sectors: the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the Department of Social Services and regional development bodies work routinely with state and local counterparts, and civil society initiatives such as Fire to Flourish have supported communities in leading their own engagement with state and Commonwealth governments in disaster recovery. Responses to the 2019-2020 bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic have generated intensive engagement across all levels of government, although this activity was largely crisis-driven and was not consolidated into enduring participation infrastructure (ARDN, 2026[69]). Building on these sectoral precedents, opportunities exist to enable more regular exchange between the Commonwealth and subnational levels on citizen participation, including for instance through Commonwealth–State–Local working groups on participation.
Australia has developed a strong participation capability offer through the APS Academy, the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement, and sector-specific toolkits, but uptake and institutionalisation remain uneven. Participation and digital engagement skills are not yet systematically embedded in the APS Work Level Standards, Integrated Leadership System, performance frameworks or corporate planning, while dedicated staff and budgets remain limited. Embedding participation within these existing workforce and leadership frameworks, strengthening incentives for uptake, and leveraging civic institutions and communities of practice could help translate guidance into more consistent practice. A current policy window also offers Australia the opportunity to convene a national participation process that could inform policy responses on a national priority while demonstrating good practice across the public sector. Drawing on the draft OECD Guidebook on Strategic Citizen Participation and tools from Canada, Finland and New Zealand, a clear mandate, broad stakeholder mapping, institutional readiness, and monitoring and evaluation built in from the outset would help establish it as a reference point for future participation initiatives.
Policy recommendations
To build a strong and cohesive culture of participation and strengthen participation skills and readiness of the Australian Public Service, the Government could consider to:
Ensure regular trainings, professional development opportunities, and up-to-date guidance on citizen participation addresses the most common challenges faced by the APS (e.g. building skills to engage citizens directly, strengthening cultural capability and engaging with various population groups) and support officials at all levels, including the Senior Executive Service, to use the right resource for the right context.
Embed participation as a core competency across APS frameworks by anchoring it in the workforce architecture and connecting tools such as the Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment to corporate planning, public reporting and performance mechanisms.
Integrate digital participation into citizen participation training pathways.
Leverage existing assets and structures to better integrate and resource participation. This could be done by designating participation contact points within existing positions and further amplifying the impact of existing trusted civic institutions, including public libraries, to support community engagement, digital access to all and participation.
Convene a high-level citizen participation process on a national priority where a policy window exists (e.g. social cohesion), designed as a demonstration case with visible political sponsorship, a replicable methodology and a monitoring and evaluation framework, and disseminate the resulting evidence and tools across the public sector to build a shared understanding of how participation is done well and how its success is measured.
The preceding section sets out the structural conditions to promote a culture of participation in government, including the institutional architecture, co-ordination mechanisms, and policy frameworks that formally back citizen and stakeholder participation. What this section turns to is the human infrastructure that converts frameworks into practices.
3.4.1. Building a culture of participation in the Australian public sector
The OECD defines a culture of participation as the values, skills, beliefs, norms of conduct, and expectations of the public sector in relation to participation (OECD, 2022[37]). Fostering it requires transforming how government operates and how public officials think about participation, including building the right skills and socialising its value and purpose. It also requires creating the right incentive structures, or removing the organisational disincentives, that encourage officials to put those skills into practice. This human layer is not only about technical competencies. It also depends on the range of backgrounds and lived experience of public officials themselves, on employee voice and networks, and on psychologically safe environments in which staff feel able to contribute. Evidence from across OECD countries shows that investing in the ‘human layer’ is key to operationalise the structural conditions mentioned earlier (OECD, 2024[2]). In fact, some argue that the culture, capabilities and everyday practices of public officials can at times be a stronger determinant in shaping and delivering meaningful and effective participation processes than the institutional frameworks themselves (Bherer, Gauthier and Simard, 2017[70]; Blijleven, 2023[71]; Bynner, Escobar and Weakley, 2023[72]).
3.4.2. Building capacities and skills on participation in the Australian public sector
Strengthening a culture of participation requires equipping public officials with the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to design and deliver meaningful participation opportunities. A mature participation culture depends on the capacity of the public workforce to understand the range of participation methods available, apply them proportionately to different policy contexts, and engage respectfully and safely with under-heard communities. Almost 80% of OECD countries have developed toolkits and guidelines for civil servants regarding citizen and stakeholder participation, with 64% also offering formal trainings (OECD, 2023[1]). This section assesses capacity building opportunities available to Australian public officials, both in policy and public facing roles, to build participation skills.
Equipping public servants with trainings and guidance on citizen participation
In Australia, the APS Academy is the lead entity in charge of learning and development within the APS. It was formally established in 2021 following recommendations of the Thodey Review. In 2022, the APS Reform Agenda, which was based on the aforementioned review, further supported this work through proposing the development of an APS Learning and Development Strategy to strengthen public sector capability and expertise. The Academy centralises trainings and capacity building tools, making them available to all APS employees at all levels across Australia. One of its core purposes is to develop “public service craft” capabilities. As defined in the Highly Capable, Future-Ready: APS Learning and Development Strategy, APS Craft is comprised of the capabilities unique to the APS, namely Integrity; Working in Government; Engagement and Partnerships; Implementation and Services; Strategy, Policy and Evaluation; and Leadership and Management (APSA, 2026[73]). Trainings and tools pertaining to citizen participation are included under the Engagement and Partnerships Craft and are available through the APS Academy website. At least four trainings and one micro-credential on citizen participation are available for APS officials, in addition to a Capability Hub (Box 3.11). Access to these offerings requires an official Australian Government email account. While the Academy differentiates its offer by seniority within the APS (e.g. programmes targeted at SES and EL2 cohorts), no comparable offer on citizen participation exists for parliamentarians or their staff, despite their role in shaping the demand side of participation. This gap is notable given documented shortfalls in induction and ongoing training for parliamentarians, which addresses community engagement primarily as a security risk to be managed rather than a capability to be developed (PWSS, 2025[74]).
Overall, Australia's national-level participation training offer is sophisticated by international standards. It also is in line with existing OECD guidance, such as the OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes (OECD, 2022[37]), as well as guidance provided by the Engagement Institute. In particular, Australia’s tiered and differentiated design of workshops and practical tools also stands out as a good practice. For example, the three First Nations people engagement workshops calibrate training to different levels of public officials.
The APS Academy website centralises practical training and micro credentials aligned with the APS Craft “Engagement and Partnerships”, focused on applied citizen and stakeholder participation and cultural capability across levels. Below is a list of the main learning opportunities and course offer. Data on uptake of these trainings is not collected by the APSC.
Engaging Stakeholders: A virtual training (two sessions, 11 hours) for public servants (APS 1–EL 2) which covers identifying when stakeholder input may be needed, how to perform stakeholder analysis, taking a systematic approach to planning, conducting and evaluating stakeholder engagement, ensuring the effectiveness of participation, closing the loop, and applying a range of methods and tools for engaging and managing stakeholders.
Engaging with First Nations Communities: Three workshops tiered by grade (APS 4–6, EL1–EL2, SES B1), co-delivered by a First Nations APS representative and an APS Academy Lead Practitioner with guidance from AIATSIS. They build culturally appropriate participation skills, considering historical and institutional context, respectful communication, and working with community protocols. They also cover the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms and the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement. Delivery prioritises peer-to-peer learning through case studies and guided discussion.
Engagement and Partnerships Capability Hub: Brings together resources to support APS employees and agencies to partner with First Nations people, communities and organisations, and engage with people and communities, non-government sectors, academia and industries.
Pacific Engagement: Building Long-Term Relationships through Cultural Capability: A micro-credential offered by Flinders University and the APS Academy with APS and Pasifika practitioners. Approximately 58 hours over 14 weeks, with online and in-person components, equipping officials with tools to apply cultural capability tools to engage with Pasifika people.
The APS Academy also piloted a Designing democratic engagement with AI course. In addition, it has collaborated with third parties on training offer, including for instance by advising on the training “Designing Democratic Engagement with AI: Practical Strategies for Public Participation” provided by innovate(us).
The APS Academy also centralises a range of tools and templates prepared by public bodies including the APSC and the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, which provide practical support to public officials and building hands-on implementation capacity (Box 3.12). Strong conceptual maturity is evidenced in materials such as the Guide to the Right Engagement, which addresses the challenge of matching participation method to purpose upstream of the engagement process. Through the Guide, policymakers are prompted to interrogate problem complexity, resources, and intended level of influence. Another strength lies in the cross referencing of tools across most resources and trainings, and the centralisation of these through the APS Academy webpage. For instance, training courses usually reference the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement and the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms. The Engagement and Partnership Learning Pathway’s tiered structure also reflects a reality across every OECD public sector, where capability is built cumulatively, through staged exposure rather than one-off training events. Overall, there is cohesiveness regarding the differentiation of different forms of engagement (e.g. inform, consult, engage), as these tools take inspiration from and expand on the Engagement Institute’s work and the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation.
Guidelines, tools and templates centralised through the APS Academy
APS Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment: An agency-level diagnostic tool operationalising the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement. Used at leadership level, it ranks capability across each of the six Charter Principles (0 = Emerging to 3 = Embedded) and prompts reflection on actions to address participation capability gaps and drive cultural change.
Charter of Partnerships and Engagement - Good Practice Guidance: Translates the Charter principles into expected behaviours. It defines “Engagement” and “Partnership” along a spectrum, provides a checklist under each Charter Principle (e.g. gathering prior engagement data, stakeholder mapping), and points to complementary tools (e.g. guidance on engaging with people with disabilities, data literacy).
First Nations Partnership Playbook: Aligned with Closing the Gap, it offers practical guidance on building partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, communities and organisations. It covers, for instance, what constitutes a strong partnership, how to set shared priorities, and how partnerships evolve. Available to all APS staff and recommended before commencing any work affecting the lives of First Nations people.
Getting Stakeholder Engagement Right: Provides 'Tips for success' for engaging stakeholders early, alongside templates including a stakeholder mapping template, feedback tracker, and engagement plan. Closing the loop is explicitly addressed, with examples and rationale on why it is important.
A Guide to the Right Engagement: Helps the APS match participation method to policy issue. Comprises a Diagnostic (including questions on problem complexity, time and resources) and a Catalogue with methods to use once an approach is identified.
MasterCraft Series - Engagement and Partnership in First Nations communities: A February 2025 recorded event led by First Assistant Commissioner Sam Jeffries and Dr Rachel Bacon (APSC), available to all APS staff via APS Learn. Supports officials in applying the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms in policy and programme design.
Engagement and Partnership Learning Pathway: A self-directed tool organised as a maturity model in three segments (Foundation; Build On and Expand; Complementary Skills). It ties learning directly to the Charter's principles and to the APS Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment, exemplifying how participation can be embedded as a scalable, role-appropriate core public service skill.
Australian Public Service Guide to Working in Place: Provides practical guidance on working with communities in the design and delivery of place-based initiatives. It provides a spectrum of participation to engage communities, consultation to co-design and co-governance. It also provides guidance on empowering local communities, building trust and community capability, reducing barriers to participation, and shifting greater influence and decision-making authority towards communities.
APS Shared Decision-Making Guide: Sets out standards and guidance for Commonwealth-level officials to move beyond consultation into three forms of shared decision making: strategic (e.g. informing priorities and policy development), operational (e.g. issuing recommendations on programme design, implementation and evaluation), and devolved (e.g. empowering communities to make decisions within pre-agreed frameworks). The Guide draws from First Nations-led models such as Empowered Communities and makes reference to relevant legislative and administrative boundaries.
Examples of sector-specific toolkits and frameworks at the Federal level
National Disability Insurance Agency Engagement Framework (NDIS): Designed to strengthen NDIA engagement with the disability community. Notable for its collaborative design through a Co-design Advisory Group.
Youth Engagement Toolkit (Office for Youth): Implements the Office for Youth's Engage! Strategy, and stands out for its interactive, step-by-step approach and strong emphasis on closing the loop and tracking impact.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnership and Engagement Framework (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing): Aims to build capability to partner with First Nations people. Stands out for its transparent governance, clear accountability lines, and learning components linking to cultural training and further literature.
Source: (APSA, 2026[78])
In addition to national guidebooks and tools, states and territories in Australia typically develop their own guidance to support policymakers’ engagement with citizens and stakeholders to inform policies and services. Victoria, for example, sets out its approach through the Public Engagement Framework 2021-2025, accompanied by a how-to guide for public engagement and the Engage Victoria digital platform (Victorian Government, 2021[79]). There are also cases of guidance developed in partnership between government and non-government institutions, such as the Guidebook for Deliberative Engagement in New South Wales (Ercan et al., 2025[80]). A comprehensive review of subnational guidance lies beyond the scope of this assessment.
Across OECD interviews, guidance on engaging citizens in regulatory policy stood out as the most frequently used in practice, partly due to its statutory relevance and direct applicability to a concrete governance process. The OIA Best Practice Consultation Guidance is a good practice example of tying guidance directly to a process, and capability directly to a specific decision moment, which increases the likelihood of uptake (Box 3.13).
The Office of Impact Analysis (OIA): OIA is a branch of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, administers the Australian Government's Policy Impact Analysis framework and is the main body responsible for impact analysis across the Commonwealth. In Australia, changes in regulation or new regulation proposals must be accompanied by an Impact Analysis. The OIA supports government bodies at the national level to determine whether one is required and assesses its quality against the framework. Between July 2022 and June 2024, the OIA conducted around 3 800 preliminary assessments, and the 2024 ANAO audit found its administration of the framework to be “largely effective”.
The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis: The Guide structures impact analysis around seven questions that every proposing agency must answer. Question 5 is “Who did you consult and how did you incorporate their feedback?”, making consultation a central element of any regulatory proposal of more than minor impact.
The OIA’s Best Practice Consultation Guidance: The OIA's Best Practice Consultation guidance outlines a set of consultation principles: consultation should be continuous, broad-based, accessible, not burdensome, transparent, consistent and flexible, subject to evaluation and review, not rushed, and a means rather than an end. The Guide also provides consultation options depending on the intended target audience, the sensitivity of an issue, and the stage of the policymaking cycle. It also sets out a range of questions to prepare a consultation strategy.
Source: (OIA, 2023[81]; ANAO, 2025[82])
Beyond the APS Academy, institutions serving senior public sector and political leadership partially complement this offer. As discussed in the introduction to this chapter, the Engagement Institute (formerly IAP2 Australasia) offers a nationally recognised Certificate of Engagement and skills-based training for engagement practitioners, and its participation frameworks are widely used across Australian jurisdictions. The Engagement Institute also provides guidance on engaging stakeholders at the right stage of the policy cycle, most notably through their Engagement Timeframes Policy which proposes that timeframes should be proportionate to the scale, complexity, impact and urgency of the decision, while responding to community capacity and needs. Access, however, depends on individual or agency initiative and fees rather than a systematic offer. In addition, the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) was established by Australian and New Zealand governments to develop senior public service leadership (ANZSOG, 2026[83]). The McKinnon Institute, a non-partisan partnership between Monash University and the Susan McKinnon Foundation, also provides structured professional development for federal, state and territory parliamentarians (McKinnon Institute, 2026[84]). These institutions represent existing channels through which participation capability could be extended to senior and political leadership cohorts.
The training and guidance offer available to APS officials responds, at least in part, to several of the challenges identified in the Snapshot above (Section 3.2), although opportunities exist to strengthen it. For example, the First Nations and Pacific engagement trainings aim to address limited public sector capability and confidence to engage with under-heard groups. These offers are typically developed in direct collaboration with First Nations people, although their effectiveness is constrained by uneven uptake across the public sector. Opportunities also exist to go further by providing tools to policymakers to assess how representative participation processes are, how to work with a wide set of audiences, engaging in a culturally-appropriate manner, and ensuring the representations of key groups.
The Guide to the Right Engagement and the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement seek to clarify the purpose, scope and expected influence of participation upstream of design, mitigating the risk of procedural engagement. On these, however, opportunities exist to strengthen messaging on engaging directly with citizens rather than through stakeholders. Tools such as Getting Stakeholder Engagement Right and the Engaging Stakeholders training embed closing-the-loop practices explicitly. The centralisation of these resources through the APS Academy partially helps counter fragmentation, by offering a shared reference point across departments and levels of seniority.
Moreover, the offer does not yet fully address the more structural challenges identified in the Snapshot, nor does it yet amount to a systematic approach to building participation-specific capabilities across the workforce (including in relation to engaging with a wide set of audiences or building cultural capability). Notably, while the APS Academy centralises the offer on trainings and tools, uptake across the APS remains uneven, and uptake of trainings is not clearly mapped across the public sector. Commonwealth agencies continue to develop their own toolkits and at times reinterpret central-level standards, leading to duplication and inconsistent practice and pointing to opportunities to better streamline these across the public sector. This pattern was reflected in the 2024 Productivity Commission review of Closing the Gap, which found that centrally set participation goals had not translated consistently into practice across the APS (Productivity Commission, 2024[85]). The breadth of available materials itself raises a navigation challenge, as public officials lack clear avenues to identify which resource is most appropriate to a given participation context. The Government of Finland is addressing a similar issue with the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, through an AI tool under development to help public officials navigate trainings, toolkits and capacity building opportunities according to the participation needs of policy officers.
A further reason for uneven uptake is that the available resources are not backed by institutional incentives to use them. The Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment, for instance, is a well-designed diagnostic but is not connected to corporate planning, public reporting or performance frameworks, leaving uptake voluntary, as reported during OECD interviews. The same applies to the training courses themselves, which currently depend on individual or team-level interest rather than being treated as a core expectation of public service work or being embedded in the incentive structures (e.g. performance and development conversations, competency frameworks or managerial expectations) that OECD experience suggests are needed to make participation skills a routine part of public service work (OECD, 2023[86]). Senior leadership plays a particularly important role in this regard, as organisations whose leaders visibly prioritise and model a practice see substantially higher engagement from line managers and staff (OECD, 2023[86]).
Moving forward, the Australian Government could consider sharpening the messaging within existing materials on engaging with citizens (rather than through organised stakeholders) through for instance providing a differentiated account of the benefits of engaging with each, as well as guidance on how to do so in practice. Providing guidance on what resource is most appropriate for a given participation context could also be addressed following the example of the AI navigation tool under development in Finland.
To address institutional barriers limiting uptake of existing offer, Australia could draw on New Zealand's example (Box 3.14), which embeds participation within a suite of policy improvement frameworks for policy practitioners and organisations. Frameworks, guidance, and trainings, signalling participation as an embedded expectation of public service work rather than a discretionary skillset. Linking instruments such as the Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment to corporate planning, public reporting and performance mechanisms could similarly create institutional incentives for agencies to engage with central guidance.
In New Zealand, the Policy Project, which sits within DPMC, is the central steward of policy capability across the NZ Public Service. It develops and co-ordinates tools and capacity-building opportunities for public officials, including on participation. The New Zealand case shows how embedding participation as part of the core competencies for developing policy and delivering services can help foster a culture of good practice across the public sector.
Policy Skills Framework
Sets out the full range of knowledge, skills and behaviours required of modern policy practitioners, with “Engage and Sustain Relationships” among them.
Informs recruitment, career development and promotion decisions across the public sector, making good practice participation an expectation of public officials; resources help individuals and teams map their skill levels and identify pathways to develop them. The Policy Project also runs in person sessions with large groups and small policy teams to self-assess their capability and develop action plans.
By including engagement as part of a suite of core policy skills rather than a separate, optional training stream, it embeds quality participation in everyday policymaking practice.
Policy Capability Framework
Describes the key components of policy capability needed by a government agency to produce quality policy advice, including an organisation’s engagement capability. Senior leaders can assess their organisation readiness to improve the policy performance of their teams and agencies against the framework.
Policy Profession Board
The Board is part of New Zealand’s Policy system leadership. It acts as a steward of system policy capability and quality and serves as a mechanism to govern and oversee the Policy Project’s work programme.
Provides guidance on significant challenges and opportunities to lift policy capability and performance across the system and within agencies. Board members are experienced senior leaders with responsibilities for leading, managing, and stewarding policy, both collectively and within their agencies.
Community Engagement Hub
Its Policy Toolbox provides definitions for participation, explains when participation might be needed and what it involves, what it can provide, and limitations to participation.
The Hub centralises resources to strengthen the upstream and downstream aspects of participation, as well as build public sector capacities, including Good Practice Guide for Community Engagement, Principles and Values for Community Engagement, Getting Ready for Community Engagement, Community Engagement Design Tool, Selecting Methods for Community Engagement, Guidance on conducting citizen juries, Guidelines for Engagement with Māori, Engagement with children and young people: Best practice guidelines and more. It also features the following resource:
Policy Community Engagement Tool: Developed in response to a recommendation of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Masjidain. It provides guidance for policy practitioners and agencies on how to conduct better, more respectful, and meaningful community engagement during policy projects. It sets out five process steps associated with good engagement practice, and links to useful community engagement resources at each step. The Tool draws on the community engagement guidance above and references the International Association of Public Participation’s resources.
Digital participation requires a digitally capable public sector
Equipping public officials with sound digital skills is a key enabler of digitally mediated citizen participation and, more broadly, of a responsive citizen-government interface (Burtscher, Piano and Welby, 2024[87]). Embedding digital participation as a routine practice requires capability across the public workforce, from digital transformation leaders through to non-digital professionals who increasingly mobilise digital tools in their day-to-day work. Digital participation can improve reach and complement, rather than replace, face-to-face and other non-digital approaches. As discussed in Chapter 4, digital standards can address digital exclusion, privacy, explainability, data governance and reduce the risk that AI-supported analysis may obscure less frequently expressed perspectives
The Australian Government has taken steps to strengthen digital and IT skills within the public sector. Published in December 2023, the Data and Digital Government Strategy includes a focus on “data and digital foundations”, which acknowledges the high demand for digital capability in the APS (Australian Government, 2023[88]).
The APS Data, Digital and Cyber Workforce Plan 2025 to 2030, released in March 2025 as part of the implementation of the Strategy, sets out a co-ordinated approach to attracting and retaining digital talent, which responds to the critical shortages in digital and ICT skills reported by 81% of APS agencies (APSC, 2024[89]) Alongside the APS Data, Digital and Cyber Workforce Plan, the Australian Government published its AI Plan for the Australian Public Service 2025, which includes a pillar on capacity building and engagement of civil servants at all levels of responsibilities (Australian Government, 2025[90]).
Concerning the use of digital tools for participation, existing strategies, plans, and training opportunities to strengthen digital skills within the public sector do not mention digital participation or other forms of digital engagement with citizens as areas of competence to develop (Australian Government, 2023[88]; 2025[91]; 2025[90]). On the other hand, the main skills frameworks and related training opportunities for Australian civil servants on citizen participation do not mention digital participation as requirements. This “blind spot” might result in limited incentives to build capabilities on how to leverage digital tools for participation. A good practice at the State level is the Digital community engagement guideline of the Queensland Government, which provides concrete guidance on designing and implementing community engagement projects with a special focus on the use of digital technologies (Queensland Government, 2024[92]).
3.4.3. Meeting participation aspirations by planning for adequate human, financial and administrative capacities
Building participation capacity requires not only equipping public officials with the right skills and tools, but also ensuring that organisations allocate the time, resources, operating environment, and staff needed to implement participation consistently in practice. A strong organisational culture of participation is one in which participation is recognised and resourced as a core public sector function, supported by workforce planning and sustained investment in administrative capability. In this context, the OECD’s Recommendation on Public Service Leadership and Capability highlights the importance of identifying the skills and competencies required and aligning employment systems to develop and deploy them where needed (OECD, 2019[93]). In addition, OECD evidence shows the importance of matching skill development with a supportive operating environment to put these to best use (Gerson, 2020[94]).
This section discusses two priority areas to align Commonwealth participation commitments with day-to-day implementation capacity, namely embedding participation in workforce planning and capability and allocating adequate human and financial resources to it.
Embedding participation in workforce planning and capability
Workforce planning can be a lever to anticipate and build participation capability in the public sector, and build a strong culture of participation. The OECD identifies citizen and stakeholder participation and citizen-centred design as a core integrated competency of a fit-for-purpose civil service (OECD, 2017[95]). In addition, comparative analysis of senior public service leadership highlights the role of leader-level signalling in promoting openness across the public sector (Gerson, 2020[94]). At the same time, most OECD countries continue to face challenges regarding building the necessary skills, knowledge and abilities of civil servants to meet participation objectives (OECD, 2017[95]).
Australia has in place several elements to measure workforce capability, including the APS Work Level Standards, the Integrated Leadership System, the Secretaries Charter of Leadership Behaviours and the Secretaries Performance Agreements. Outside of government, the Engagement Institute has developed EngageMark, a tool to support a self assessment and certification of public sector bodies regarding their participation maturity (Engagement Institute, 2026[96]). However, OECD interviews indicate that participation is not yet systematically reflected in these instruments. Most Commonwealth agencies do not formally assess workforce capacity to conduct participation processes, and there is no systematic mapping of participation-related skill gaps across the public service. Officials interviewed reported capability gaps regarding sustained stakeholder management beyond ad-hoc consultations, engaging the public on polarising or sensitive issues, and culturally sensitive participation. Setting a workforce baseline specific to participation can support departments to target professional development, plan recruitment or track capability maturation over time.
Moving forward, the Australian Government could consider anchoring participation more explicitly in the existing APS workforce architecture as an expected competency, giving leaders practical levers to signal its importance to the public sector. Concretely, this could include updating the APS Work Level Standards (e.g. by explicitly mentioning citizen and stakeholder participation under “Stakeholder Management” at appropriate job classification levels) and revising the Integrated Leadership System (e.g. by adding an explicit call at each tier under “Listens to, understands and recognises the needs of others” to identify opportunities for, and implement, participation exercises with citizens and stakeholders). Similar amendments to the Secretaries Charter of Leadership Behaviours and the Secretaries Performance Agreements could reinforce participation as a leadership expectation, in line with the Thodey Review and the APS Reform agenda (Thodey, 2019[58]; APSC, 2024[97]). Formal levers could be paired with practical recognition (e.g. through Branch-level Engagement Champions, or Participation Champions as a criterion for Public Service Medal awards) to develop concrete incentives for building participation skills. The effectiveness of such administrative levers would be reinforced by sustained commitment at the political level: as discussed in Section 3.3.1, public officials' confidence to initiate participation is closely tied to signals from ministers and senior leadership, and workforce incentives are most likely to shift practice where they operate in tandem with visible political endorsement of participation's value.
Allocating adequate resources to participation
Once participation is anchored in workforce expectations, it is key to develop the organisational structures, staffing and resources to deliver on them sustainably. OECD evidence indicates that institutional embedding of participation responsibilities enables governments to take decisions at lower cost over time, by accumulating learning and reducing reliance on one-off processes (OECD, 2024[2]). Under fiscal constraints, prioritising economies of scale, reducing duplication and allocating clear responsibilities becomes a question of value for money.
As reflected by interviews and surveys to government in Australia, dedicated staff and budget lines for participation remain uncommon across Commonwealth agencies, with notable exceptions including the Office for Youth within the Department of Education. OECD interviews carried out in the context of this report indicate that responsibility for co-ordinating citizen and stakeholder participation is typically distributed across individual policy divisions or programme areas, with no clear focal points. As is the case across several OECD countries (OECD, 2017[95]), Australian agencies can at times rely on external consultants to deliver engagement activities, an arrangement that can deliver short-term outputs but limits opportunities to invest in institutional knowledge or community relationships that sustained participation requires. Civil society organisations, which often act as a bridge between government and citizens, similarly report rarely receiving long-term programmatic funding for this role (see Chapter 2).
Resourcing participation adequately does not imply uniform allocations. Funding needs vary with the design choices made for each process, including its scale and frequency, whether it builds on existing structures and platforms or requires new ones, the mix of in-person and digital channels, the depth of analysis required, and the level of feedback planned. Making these drivers explicit at the design stage allows agencies to match ambition to available resources and to identify where reusable infrastructure offers better value than commissioning processes anew each time. Emerging evidence suggests that digital and AI-enabled tools can strengthen this value-for-money case: standing platforms such as Brazil's Brasil Participativo or France’s CIPC participation platforms reduce the marginal cost of each new process once established (see Section 3.4), while AI-supported analysis can reduce resource-intensive elements of large-scale participation (e.g. synthesising high volumes of citizen input) (OECD, 2026[98]).
At the same time, resourcing participation is not only a matter of internal departmental budgets, but also about building economies of scale and strengthening relational capital. Australia hosts a distinctive network of trusted, publicly funded civic institutions, including the Australian Electoral Commission, the Museum of Australian Democracy, the Parliamentary Education Office and the national public library network, that already serve as a basis for institutionalised participation infrastructure (Box 3.15). These institutions can offer economies of scale that one-off, division-by-division engagement cannot, and act as ready-made contact points with communities the Commonwealth otherwise struggles to reach. Their value is also relational: the trust and networks accumulated through sustained community presence can function as a form of institutional currency. In fact, evidence from New Zealand suggests that early relational investment in trusted intermediaries is a key enabler of meaningful co-design and delivery of participation processes (Box 3.15).
Australian Electoral Commission: Provides trusted information, education, and engagement programmes to support informed participation in Australia's democracy. The AEC delivers federal election and referendum information through mainstream, multicultural, digital, online, and school-based channels; develops educational resources to strengthen civic and electoral literacy; and provides guidance to help Australians identify misinformation and understand electoral processes. Through tailored outreach and partnership activities, it engages various communities, including First Nations people, young people, people experiencing homelessness and those living in remote areas. The AEC's sustained work with remote communities, together with improvements to direct enrolment and update process and the use of other forms of evidence of identify such as Medicare cards, contributed to increasing the estimated Indigenous enrolment rate from 74.7% in 2017 to 93.0% in 2025, with almost 249 000 additional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people enrolled to vote over that period
Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD): MoAD an executive agency within the Communications and the Arts portfolio, reaching some 300 000 visitors onsite, 90 000+ students and teachers through the PACER programme, and 400 000+ students and teachers through digital and outreach programmes each year. Its Democracy in a Box pilot, launched in August 2025, is rolling out to 40 regional and remote schools in Queensland and the Northern Territory, delivering Years 5–6 civics resources including teacher professional development, curated books and inquiry-led games.
Parliamentary Education Office (PEO): The PEO educates Australians about, and inspires their enthusiasm for, Australia’s parliamentary democracy. In 2025, it delivered 2 146 education programmes at Parliament House to 76 486 students and 7 429 adults. The PEO also supports senators and members of parliament to engage with students and teachers through providing printed educational materials.
Australia's public library network: Australia features 1 717 public library service points around the country, with a reported 88 million in-person visits in 2024. 409 000 library programmes were delivered nationwide in the same year, attracting more than 7 million participants. These include programming on digital literacy, media literacy, scam awareness and social cohesion.
Moving forward, and recognising the fiscal constraints facing the Australian Government, the priority could be to make better use of existing arrangements rather than create new ones. Agencies could designate participation contact points within existing positions to consolidate institutional memory, reduce duplication across policy divisions, and provide a clearer interface for cross-government co-ordination. Investing in cross-departmental communities of practice (see previous sections) would build on these focal points, allowing capability to be developed peer-to-peer across the APS at limited additional cost. In parallel, lighter-touch partnerships with the trusted civic institutions outlined in Box 3.15 (e.g. through memoranda of understanding, joint planning cycles) could help leverage their existing community reach without requiring substantial new funding.
3.4.4. Seizing a policy window to demonstrate and scale a culture of participation
The preceding sections examined how skills, incentives and resources can support a culture of participation across the APS. This section turns to how a single, high-visibility process can help accelerate that shift. Beyond its immediate policy purpose, such a process can serve to test new participation approaches, strengthen existing guidance and tools, and feed lessons back into APS Academy trainings, the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement, and the Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment.
Australia, like many OECD countries, is navigating a period of changing trust in institutions, where citizens are experiencing fragmentation along cultural, generational and socioeconomic lines, and civic space is itself under pressure (see Chapter 1). These dynamics make the case for engaging citizens more actively to help shape government priorities. Moments of heightened political attention to a national challenge can open policy windows where political will, public attention and institutional mandate converge. The current focus on social cohesion is an example one such moment, following the Bondi Terror Attack in 2025 and the establishment of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Such a window could offer the Government of Australia an opportunity to convene a high-visibility national participation process on a priority of shared concern, both to inform policy responses and to serve as a demonstration case for how participation is done well across the public sector.
OECD interviews conducted before and after December 2025 suggest that policymakers see the value of participation but are not always certain how to deploy it strategically on complex, cross-cutting challenges. A fit-for-purpose approach (i.e. treating decisions about whether, when, why and how to engage citizens as upstream strategic choices) can increase the likelihood that a process of this profile succeeds and builds, rather than erodes, public trust. The draft OECD Guidebook on Strategic Citizen Participation proposes seven upstream considerations to structure such decisions, spanning policy and context fit, mandate and purpose, stakeholder mapping, institutional readiness, method choice, success measurement, and an explicit go/no-go decision (Box 3.16). In Australia, the Engagement Institute’s report Strategic Engagement: Democracy’s Urgent Task also outline high-level conditions to position participation as a strategic leadership capability (Engagement Institute, 2026[104]).
The Draft OECD Guidebook on Strategic Citizen Participation proposes seven upstream good practice considerations to support governments in making informed, strategic decisions about whether, when and how to involve citizens in policymaking. Rather than treating participation as a technical or procedural choice, the considerations encourage policymakers to approach it as an upstream strategic decision taken before a process is launched, and to assess whether enabling conditions are in place or whether foundational issues should be addressed first.
The seven considerations focus on:
1. Assessing policy and context fit: determining whether the policy issue, timing and decision space are suitable for citizen participation.
2. Clarifying mandate and purpose: establishing the legal or political basis for participation and how citizen input is expected to influence decisions, as well as who owns the decision. This also includes assessing what citizens and stakeholders can realistically influence, as well as
3. Mapping and engaging the right citizens and stakeholders: identifying whose perspectives are most relevant and how representation will be ensured.
4. Gauging institutional readiness: assessing organisational capacity, leadership commitment and co-ordination to support participation and follow‑up.
5. Choosing the right method: selecting participatory approaches that are proportionate, feasible and aligned with the intended level of influence.
6. Defining and measuring success: clarifying expected outputs and outcomes and how results will be monitored and communicated. This includes how participants will be informed on how their feedback was considered.
7. Making a well‑grounded decision: bringing these considerations together to make an explicit go/no‑go decision on whether to proceed.
By structuring decision making around these upstream considerations, governments can better manage expectations, allocate resources effectively, and increase the likelihood that participation contributes meaningfully to policy quality and public trust.
Source: OECD (forthcoming[105]), OECD Guidebook on Strategic Citizen Participation, OECD Publishing, Paris.
International experience demonstrates the value of this approach when applied to nationally significant challenges. For example, New Zealand's Community Engagement Design Tool (Box 3.17) underlines that method should follow purpose: consultations, deliberative processes, co-design and structured dialogue each generate different forms of evidence, and the appropriate choice depends on the nature of the decision the process is intended to inform. In addition, the thoughtful integration of digital tools can also be key to the success of a large-scale process: digital and AI-enabled tools can extend reach, enable remote and asynchronous participation, and support the analysis of large volumes of citizen input, as demonstrated by Finland's use of the AI-powered sense-making platform Pol.is to surface topics and areas of friction across in-person dialogue sessions, and by the retrospective analysis of over two million contributions to France's 2019 Grand Débat, which showed that the absence of such tools at the time prevented policymakers from adequately tapping into citizens' input.
New Zealand’s Community Engagement Design Tool was developed by the Policy Project Team within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to help public officials to identify early-stage considerations before participation begins. A key aim of the tool is to prevent risks related to poorly scoped or tokenistic processes through a structured methodology that aligns closely with the upstream elements outlined above, particularly around mandate clarity and purpose definition.
Clarifying mandate and purpose is among the tool’s instructions. It requires agencies to explicitly articulate why participation is being undertaken (e.g. policy development, service design, statutory obligation, relationship-building), what outcome will the participation process inform, and whether the issue is genuinely open to influence.
The tool also emphasises internal alignment within government before engaging the public, including confirming who holds decision making authority and whether there is a commitment to act on findings. Drawing on international frameworks such as IAP2's, it requires identifying the level of public influence possible from the outset, specifying what participants can and cannot influence.
In terms of ensuring process robustness and mitigating risks, the tool incorporates forward-looking elements such as assessing risks and constraints (timing, resources, stakeholder fatigue), identifying alternative or complementary participation methods, and anticipating how results will be communicated back to participants (i.e. closing the feedback loop).
Source: (DPMC, 2023[106])
Applied to a national priority, these considerations would imply anchoring the process in an explicit mandate connected to a live decision making agenda; mapping participants beyond peak bodies and well-resourced stakeholders to reach those most affected and least often heard; and honestly assessing whether capability, co-ordination and leadership commitment are in place before launching. Frameworks such as Canada's Maturity Model for Public Participation offer a structured self-assessment in regard to the latter (Box 3.18).
The Maturity Model for Public Participation is a developmental framework launched by Simon Fraser University's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in collaboration with the Government of Canada's Treasury Board Secretariat Open Government Team. It is designed to help governments and organisations assess and build their organisational capacity to deliver high-quality citizen participation, on the premise that poor-quality engagement can weaken trust in democratic institutions or generate misleading data that does not represent the public interest.
The Model is structured around guiding principles for high-quality participation and a set of standards of practice that operationalise each principle. Organisations are assessed against four levels of organisational capacity, allowing them to identify their current position and the steps required to progress. The framework can be used as a self-assessment of organisational capacity; as an evaluative tool applied to specific participation projects; and as the basis for an action plan to enhance practice over time.
Source: Simon Fraser University (2025[107])
Specific case studies of governments leveraging participation as a central governance tool further illustrate that when key design choices are made deliberately, from the framing of the topic to the selection of participants and methods, participation can deliver tangible policy outcomes. New Zealand's response to the 2019 Christchurch attack (Box 3.19) shows how careful attention to context and timing, sustained multi-format engagement adapted to the needs of different communities, and adequate time and resources for genuine participation was crucial to rebuilding legitimacy with affected communities and shaping the focus areas of the government's social cohesion framework. Finland's National Dialogues (Box 3.19) illustrate a complementary lesson on topic narrowing and process governance: topics are selected jointly with civil society against explicit criteria, and the decentralised, scalable format surfaces lived experience across a large and heterogeneous population. In both examples, positive participation outcomes are shaped by clear upstream design principles.
New Zealand’s social cohesion agenda
New Zealand's social cohesion agenda offers a clear example of participation that is purposefully matched to the nature and timing of a policy challenge. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack produced 44 recommendations for government to develop a strategic framework to improve social cohesion. Ahead of implementation, the government carefully considered contextual factors, including that trust between affected communities and the state was fragile and experiences of discrimination widespread. To ensure citizens' voices were central to the design of government responses, the Ministry of Social Development conducted sustained multi-form engagement over ten months, reaching over 600 stakeholders through 53 community events and hui (meetings), online surveys, wānanga (deliberation) and written submissions.
The result of that process was a strategic social cohesion framework (Te Korowai Whetū) whose vision, outcomes, and six focus areas were directly shaped by citizen feedback. The framework's name, drawn from the saying “Whatua te korowai i ngā tini whetū” (to weave a cloak from many stars) was developed in collaboration with several community groups, and reflects the aspiration that all people can thrive together. The definition of social cohesion itself was refined through community feedback, ultimately describing a vision where all people, whānau (family), and communities connect and feel a sense of belonging, are able to participate, are recognised and respected, are equitably included, and have trust in others and in government organisations.
The Harmony Accord, signed in July 2025 by Jewish and Muslim organisations, is a further downstream result of embedding participation strategically. It entailed a community-led commitment to dialogue and mutual respect that government helped create the conditions for, rather than designed from the top down.
Accounts from policymakers in New Zealand suggest that correctly identifying the nature of a policy problem, acting on contextual signals about community readiness and trust, providing adequate time, resources and public sector skills for genuine participation, and using key stakeholders’ advice on designing responsive participation approaches can be a way to build legitimacy, strengthen the government-citizen relationship, surface lived experience, and improve the durability of policy over time.
Finland's National Dialogues
Finland's National Dialogues are a government-civil society co-designed participation model, born out of the “Lockdown Dialogues” held during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021. They were formalised as a standing national model in 2022, following OECD recommendations to establish such a mechanism with the express intention to strengthen trust in government, and foster dialogue on complex policy issues.
The purpose of the dialogues is to use participants' experiences to build an understanding and up-to-date picture of various social phenomena. The model does not aim for consensus-based decision making nor reaches binding recommendations, the aim is to capture as many voices as possible on the experiences and challenges at hand, and to strengthen cohesion and the ability of Finnish society to adapt to modern challenges. Results from National Dialogues are systematically synthesised and fed into policymaking processes, including the preparation of government programmes, law drafting and foresight work.
To launch a dialogue, themes must be chosen with civil society, with topic selection being guided by specific criteria. This co-determination, criteria-based approach ensures that the dialogue approach appropriately matches the issue at hand. Topic selection is guided by four criteria: a more versatile understanding of the subject is needed; the topic concerns a large number of citizens at the national level; the topic does not exclude any particular group of people; and a broader understanding of the topic will benefit public administration. In exceptional circumstances (e.g. crisis response) the core group may decide to launch a series of dialogues without a topic selection dialogue. The model is an example of scalable national infrastructure: dialogues are organised in a distributed manner by a wide range of actors, and their results are compiled into national-level summaries contributing to a shared situational picture for decision makers.
Critically, a process of this visibility could serve as a replicable reference point for the wider public sector. This means documenting the methodology so it can be adapted by other agencies and building in a monitoring and evaluation framework before launch. The framework could capture process quality (e.g. representativeness, geographic spread, participant experience), immediate outcomes (e.g. the quality of insights generated, public synthesis, a formal government response), and longer-term impact, potentially anchored in a national measurement framework tracking belonging, trust and participation over time, as New Zealand has done. Mechanisms to close the feedback loop could be integrated by design rather than in retrospect. A single national process would not, on its own, resolve the structural challenges underlying any complex national priority. But designed well, with a clear purpose, visible political sponsorship, careful stakeholder mapping, culturally safe methods and clear success metrics, it could both give government the evidence and mandate it needs to act, and generate the shared understanding, tools and confidence needed to foster a culture of participation across the Australian public sector.
Australia has a strong foundation for measuring participation processes, outcomes and their impact. For process quality, the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation and the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement provide standards to measure against, with opportunities to develop common baseline indicators. Regarding outputs and outcomes, reporting is strongest for statutory processes such as royal commissions and regulatory impact analysis, while systematic closing-the-loop reporting is otherwise limited, with First Nations partnerships being an exception. To measure the long-term impacts of participation, the APSC’s Survey of Trust in Australian Public Services and the General Social Survey, among others, provide robust data on trust and democratic outcomes, but are not explicitly designed to attribute changes to specific participation processes. Connecting these three levels could provide a more comprehensive picture of the added value of participation.
Policy recommendations
To strengthen public sector capacities to measure, make the most of, and demonstrate the added value of participation, the Australian Government could consider to:
Develop a concise, whole-of-government baseline set of indicators for evaluating the quality of participation processes, embed it into routine evaluations of governance processes, and aggregate evaluation outcomes through a centralised evidence base to strengthen participation quality consistency, institutional learning, accountability, and system-wide monitoring across the APS.
Establish a whole-of-government standard for “closing the loop” to citizens on the outcomes of participation processes, including through common reporting templates, and integration into existing APS performance and audit frameworks. Leveraging existing digital infrastructure, internal data sharing frameworks, and using artificial intelligence could enable such outcomes to be then leveraged and reused across the public sector.
Consider developing Annual Participation Reports, aggregating data already captured through departmental consultation hubs on participation opportunities, to strengthen cross-government visibility of participation activities.
Pilot an initiative to evaluate the long-term impacts of participation, including effects on trust, policy effectiveness, public value, and government culture. Building on this, consider building on APSC efforts to collect robust, standardised, time series data on Australian democracy, systematically drawing links between participation processes and their impact.
Robust measurement frameworks can strengthen citizen participation as a source of demonstrable public value, by providing evidence on the quality of processes and the outcomes and impacts they generate. Such frameworks can further support accountability, help build a case for prioritising participation, identify which practices may or may not be working, and enable institutional learning (OECD, 2025[112]). Despite these benefits, the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of citizen participation remains uneven across OECD countries. Practice is often fragmented, with individual processes evaluated ad hoc, with few common indicators or standards that allow findings to be compared, aggregated, or built upon over time (OECD, 2025[112]). M&E activities are also frequently under-resourced, and constrained by limited in-house expertise, particularly when it comes to assessing less tangible outcomes such as trust, legitimacy, or the quality of deliberation (OECD, 2021[113]). A further difficulty lies in attribution: the impacts of participation tend to materialise over long time horizons and through indirect pathways, making it difficult to link specific processes to changes in policy, institutional behaviour, or public attitudes (OECD, 2021[113]; Nabatchi, 2012[114]).
The OECD Recommendation on Open Government identifies monitoring, evaluation, and data collection as foundational to better-informed policymaking, and calls for the continued development of monitoring mechanisms (OECD, 2017[5]). Building on its work on evaluating deliberative processes, the OECD measures the added value of participation across three interconnected dimensions: 1) the quality of the process itself, including how it was designed, resourced, and delivered, and who was included; 2) immediate outputs and outcomes, including how input was used by decision makers, how recommendations were responded to, and how participants were informed of results (i.e. closing the feedback loop); 3) longer-term impacts on policy quality, trust in government, and the resilience of public institutions (OECD, 2021[113]).
This section discusses how Australia can build on existing efforts to better capture and demonstrate the added value of citizen participation processes. It sets out the current state of play, and finds that Australia stands above most OECD countries regarding measuring what is most typically seen as participation impacts (e.g. trust in government). The country now has the opportunity to set an international benchmark in connecting this work to participation processes.
3.5.1. Monitoring the quality of participation processes in Australia
Measuring the quality of participation processes can help identify practice gaps, support institutional learning, and build trust in both process and outcomes. Demonstrating that a process has been well designed and well delivered can increase the credibility of its outputs in the eyes of decision makers, participants, and the wider public (OECD, 2020[4]).
Australia has strong yet scattered guidance on the quality of participation processes. As discussed in Section 3.3, the country has well-developed participation-specific frameworks at Commonwealth level, providing a strong foundation on which to build process quality indicators. For example, the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation sets out engagement principles, behavioural standards, and four “ways to engage”, while the 2023 Charter of Partnerships and Engagement establishes six aspirational principles supported by guidance and a self-assessment tool (Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2021[115]) (Box 3.5). Although the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement, the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation, and the APS Engagement Maturity Assessment Tool point in the same direction, they differ in vocabulary and scope. This can have implications for building consensus on what good participation quality looks like, including regarding the development of process quality indicators.
Commonwealth-wide evaluation infrastructure, although not designed specifically for participation, also provides a strong base for building an integrated approach to participation monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in Australia. For example, the Australian Centre for Evaluation and associated Commonwealth Evaluation Policy promote evaluation capability and learning across government (Australian Centre for Evaluation, n.d.[116]). The Policy applies to all entities subject to the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. It supports entities in strengthening their evaluation practices and capability, which includes strategies for using evaluation as an input in programme design and incorporating evaluation into programme governance to improve how implementation is assessed and how the impact of government activities is measured. In addition, the Office of Impact Analysis offers resources and guidance for public officials to implement quality participation processes as part of impact assessments on draft regulation (Office of Impact Analysis, 2023[117]).
The OIA is also the only Commonwealth body that systematically reviews and reports on the quality of participation processes for a concrete government function (i.e. approving regulation). It independently assesses the adequacy of consultation plans and their execution to ensure these are proportional to the issue at hand, answering seven standardised Impact Analysis questions. It also publishes its assessments, including instances of non-compliance. This role has recently been reinforced. The new Australian Government Impact Analysis Framework, updated in June 2026, structures impact analysis around seven standardised questions, one of which is dedicated to consultation: agencies must set out what consultation was undertaken and how feedback was incorporated into policy design, including explaining the purpose and objectives of the consultation, summarising stakeholder feedback, and identifying where policy options were modified as a result. In doing so, the framework embeds a “closing the feedback loop” discipline into routine regulatory decision making (OIA, 2026[118]).The OIA's working model and the Commonwealth Evaluation Policy's methodological infrastructure can serve as a basis to broaden the systematic M&E of participation processes beyond regulatory consultations and include a broader spectrum of Commonwealth participation, without creating new institutions.
In addition, capability review initiatives in Australia offer precedents that illustrate how participation quality can be assessed against existing standards. Standalone examples of good practice include the 2026 APSC Capability Review of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the ANAO’s 2025 audit of Treasury’s Measuring What Matters framework, which assessed participation processes against APS engagement principles. (APSC, 2025[119]) (ANAO, 2025[120]).
Domain-specific frameworks are another example of existing practices that can inform and strengthen the M&E of participation processes, particularly in relation to the participation of First Nations communities. For instance, the Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships and Engagement Framework from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing establishes specific expectations for the conduct of participation exercises with First Nations communities. Another example is the work of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) through the Co-Design Lessons Learned Report (June 2023), which assesses co-design processes that informed the Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data. The Report discusses the quality of co-design processes, drawing on the experiences of APS and First Nations members (NIAA, 2023[121]). It also provides practical guidance for respectful engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and illustrates how policymakers can embed participation process quality requirements as part of core policymaking processes.
As discussed in Appendix A, some legislative requirements exist on good quality participation processes across the Commonwealth level, though they are generally limited to specific policy areas or procedural aspects, such as consultation periods under the Legislation Act 2003 (Australian Government, 2019[122]).
Although not in the scope of this review, subnational examples in Australia provide different working models on which a Commonwealth approach could draw. The State of Victoria, for instance, offers a particularly developed model where an independent oversight body has translated participation principles into auditable criteria and used them to benchmark practice across the public sector (Box 3.20).
The Victorian Auditor-General's Office (VAGO) developed the Public Participation in Government Decision-Making: Better Practice Guide (2015) which sets out criteria against which Victorian agencies' participation processes can be assessed. It also includes explicit elements addressing core dimensions of process quality. VAGO has applied the Better Practice Guide iteratively across performance audits, including a dedicated participation-focused audit in 2017 covering both the Victorian public sector as a whole and the local government sector. This audit assessed agencies' participation practices directly against the elements of the Guide and identified specific gaps in design, resourcing, communication, and closing the loop. The 2017 audit, for instance, reported that 30% of the 84 performance audits it conducted between 2013 and 2016 included negative findings about public participation in the Victorian public sector providing, in effect, a quantitative baseline on participation quality assembled by the audit office itself.
Source: (VAGO, 2015[123]; VAGO, 2017[124])
Moving forward, Australia has an opportunity to streamline its strong yet scattered guidance on M&E of participation into a concise set of baseline indicators for the quality of participation processes, expanding on those provided in Measuring What Matters as discussed in previous sections. A concise set of common baseline evaluation criteria, applicable across the APS and built on existing guidance, could help improve coherence and harmonisation of practices, as done in Scotland (Box 3.21). Such a baseline could be indicative of the minimum standards every process should strive to meet, maintaining consistency in transparency, accountability and reporting while leaving room for agencies to adapt indicators to their participation objectives and operating contexts. It could also be calibrated proportionately so that the depth of evaluation matches the scale and stakes of the process. Engaging citizens to define such indicators could also support developing criteria that is viewed as pertinent and impactful by the general population. Anchored in a clear purpose (e.g. building institutional learning, as an accountability tool to strengthen citizen trust) such a baseline framework could help translate Australia's existing body of guidance into a tool to collect relevant data and report on the minimum quality of participation processes across government.
Once minimum baseline indicators are established, Australia is well placed to become an international leader in embedding these into routine governance processes and building a centralised evidence base on participation practice across government. Embedding participation quality into existing governance instruments (e.g. corporate plans, PGPA performance measures, and evaluation plans developed under the Commonwealth Evaluation Policy) could institutionalise the assessment of participation processes as part of broader public administration processes. Pairing this with a centralised evidence base that aggregates standardised M&E information across processes (e.g. evidence that a participation strategy was prepared, participants were representative, sufficient time and resourcing were committed, sufficient information was made available to participants) would, for the first time in any OECD country, allow basic descriptive questions about the quality of public participation to be answered at whole-of-government level. These efforts would benefit from a central co-ordination and support function, leveraging the success of the APS Reform model. Such embedded requirements could also address concerns highlighted through OECD interviews which found that officials commonly attribute assessing the quality of any given process to political will rather than as a regular institutional practice. Bringing together Australia's existing strengths (e.g. robust participation frameworks and M&E infrastructure) into a single working system could help make Australia a model that other OECD Members could look to as a point of reference.
Scotland's National Standards for Community Engagement (NSfCE), owned by the Scottish Government and maintained by the Scottish Community Development Centre are a set of guiding principles for improving the engagement of public bodies with the public. The NSfCE were explicitly designed as a unified baseline against which the minimum quality of participation processes can be assessed. They describe the main elements of effective participation and set out detailed performance statements that public officials can use to achieve quality results and impact. When surveyed, 68% of respondents from the Scottish Community Development Centre said that participation practices had improved in Scotland since the adoption of the Standards.
The Standards are supported by an online planning and recording software called VOiCE that assists public officials to design, deliver and evaluate participation processes. VOiCE is being used as a platform to record and centralise participation processes across some local authorities in Scotland, enabling public officials to monitor progress implementation, evaluating processes, and building institutional learning.
Source: (Scottish Government, 2022[125])
3.5.2. Compiling data and reporting on immediate outputs and outcomes
The second component of measuring and reporting on the added value of participation involves compiling data and reporting on outputs and outcomes. Outputs include submissions, citizen recommendations, preparing “what we heard” summaries, and communicating them by closing the loop to participants. Immediate outcomes concern the immediate results or effects of these outputs. Collecting data on these can provide a clearer picture on the availability of participation processes and their uptake. As discussed in previous sections, closing the loop – one of the strongest examples of output – continues to be both a priority and a challenge in Australia, similarly to many OECD countries. Digital participation platforms are a complementary and necessary component of this monitoring and evaluation, allowing governments to centralise data collection and better understand citizens' preferences across different tools. They can surface headline figures such as contributions, registered participants, and votes per process, while web analytics enable a more granular view of participant behaviour, including for example unique visitors, user journeys, and dropout rates at specific steps. Many of these tools also include built-in features for reporting back to citizens on how their input shaped decisions in a standardised and accessible way.
The strongest participation reporting and response practices in Australia are the standing conventions attached to statutory or compulsory consultation processes. For example, royal commissions publish submissions, transcripts, exhibits, and final reports as standing practice. The Government tends to respond formally to the recommendations of royal commissions; accepting, noting, or rejecting each (Australian Government, 2026[126]). Comparable conventions apply to inquiries by the Productivity Commission and the Australian Law Reform Commission. Both bodies operate under legislation that requires reports to be tabled in Parliament, and both publish consultation papers, submissions, and final reports as standing practice (Australian Government, 2024[127]; ALRC, 2026[128]). Government responses to inquiry recommendations are published by the relevant portfolio department (e.g. DISR “Australian Government response: Productivity Commission inquiry into intellectual property arrangements”) (DISR, 2017[129]). The Office of Impact Analysis also publishes all Impact Analyses for regulatory proposals, its assessments of those analyses, and instances of non-compliance, providing a published record of consultation outputs and their assessment for regulatory policy (OIA, 2026[130]).
Whole-of-government frameworks for participation explicitly include reporting on outputs and outcomes as an expectation. The Charter of Partnerships and Engagement's “Accountable” principle, as updated following consultation, commits the APS to maintain “clear and regular communication by sharing information, taking responsibility for commitments made and informing people and communities on how they have contributed to the final decision” (APSC, 2023[131]). The APS Framework for Engagement and Participation similarly identifies communicating with participants about how their input has been used as part of expected practice (DISR, 2026[132]).
At present, the only recurring effort to document participation practices across government concerns engagement with First Nations communities. The annual Closing the Gap Partnership Stocktake records the number of qualifying partnership arrangements year-on-year, providing a public evidence base on progress in embedding shared decision making. (NIAA, 2025[133]). Stocktake outcomes have been referenced in the APS Commissioner’s State of the Service Report in the past, although no systematic account of participation outputs or outcomes exists more broadly across the APS. Realising the ambitions of the National Agreement remains a work in progress: the Productivity Commission found in 2024 that greater efforts would be needed to give full effect to its commitments, including on shared decision making (Productivity Commission, 2024[134]). Existing frameworks such as Measuring What Matters, discussed below, could provide a basis for extending such reporting across the APS.
At the agency level, collecting data and reporting on the outcomes of participatory processes through digital platforms for participation more broadly is performed on an ad hoc basis. “What we heard” reports, usually uploaded as comprehensive pdf documents, are a widely used convention for publishing the synthesis of consultation submissions. Their format could however follow a standardised template rather than department-specific conventions, for instance by making it compulsory to prepare a “what we heard” and “what we did” report. On the other hand, web analytics of government websites are conducted in a standardised manner. The DTA provides agencies with web analytics on their institutional websites, which can help agencies surface citizens’ priority when consulting their websites and whether their user journeys are sufficiently intuitive to follow. For instance, the DTA compiles the analytics of Have Your Say, the digital platform for participation developed as a module of the broader Government Content Management System (Gov CMS) and hosted by the Department of Finance.
Finally, some evidence suggests that more could be done to develop more granular approaches to tracking citizen participation outcomes, including from a lifecycle approach (ARDN, 2026[135]). To align with to Australia’s priorities on social cohesion and building a strong sense of multicultural identity, such granular approach could also be extended to map participation outcomes by different sociodemographic characteristics. This could include, for instance, better mapping First Nations people’ participation rates, representation in civic forums, government advisory bodies, public participation activities and co-design activities to build a stronger evidence base on equity of participation.
Moving forward, Australia could elevate closing the loop from departmental convention to a system-wide standard, as a key lever to strengthen trust in government (see also Chapter 1). Existing departmental digital participation platforms already provide a channel to publish government responses. Some practices exist already in this regard, including for example agency efforts to proactively publish information on their website as part of the Government’s Information Publication Scheme (IPS) (OAIC, 2023[136]). The PGPA Act performance framework could further support these efforts by integrating reporting on participation (closing the loop) as part of Corporate Plans and Annual Performance Statements as an indicator of participation quality. Further, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) could examine participation reporting through its existing audits of Annual Performance Statements, or assess agency practices against established benchmarks such as the APS Framework for Engagement and Participation. Such a review could for instance begin with a low-cost, desk-based assessment of agencies' public consultation platforms (e.g. verifying whether concluded processes were followed by a published government response to close the loop) complemented by documentation from a small sample of participation processes in selected agencies. Anchoring the requirement in core governance functions could translate aspirational principles from existing frameworks into routine APS practice. Moreover, Australia could consider developing a standardised template to report on participatory processes. This would unlock new opportunities for sharing data across agencies and tap into the archive of past consultations. The analysis of concluded processes, which could be supported by innovative digital tools such as artificial intelligence, would allow to better target future initiatives, thus reducing consultation fatigue. The creation of a more cohesive digital infrastructure for participation in Australia (see Section 3.6) could ease this process by enabling data collection, sharing and analysis from digital participation platforms of all government agencies.
Australia could consider going one step further, by establishing a whole-of-government Annual Participation Report. Drawing on the example from Ukraine (Box 3.22), PM&C, supported by the APSC could compile regular reports prepared by agencies on their implementation of participation processes. These reports could aggregate data already captured in agency consultation hubs (e.g. who engages, from where, on what, when) and could be published as a standalone document, or as a dedicated chapter of the APS Commissioner’s State of the Service Report. Oversight by a board of civil society organisations could help provide civil society scrutiny.
Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine: quarterly reporting on participation activities across government
In Ukraine, the central co-ordinator for citizen participation across the executive is the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (SCMU), and within it the Department of Communication and Public Relations. The SCMU provides the institutional architecture that allows the Government of Ukraine to track, report and improve participation activities across all ministries and central executive authorities.
A Procedure for Conducting Public Consultations on the Development and Implementation of State Policy requires each executive authority to draft an annual tentative plan for its consultations, conduct consultations using a defined set of formats (public discussions, online consultations, opinion surveys), and publish a report on the results. These results are then compiled by the SCMU, which then centralises them through a periodic, publicly available report. Civil society advisory groups are involved in reviewing such reports and complementing with independent inputs.
Source: (SCMU, 2026[137])
3.5.3. Mapping and demonstrating the long-term effects of participation
The third aspect of measuring and demonstrating the added value of participation concerns tracking its long-term effects on policies, institutions, government culture, civic skills, and relationships between government and the public. (OECD, 2021[113]; OECD, 2025[112]; OECD, forthcoming[43]). Typical indicators include trust in institutions, political efficacy, satisfaction with democracy, and policy legitimacy. Measuring these impacts remains complex and underdeveloped across most OECD countries (OECD, 2021[113]; Newton and Geissel, 2012[138]).
While Australia does not collect systematic data on the reach, quality, or influence of participation processes themselves, as discussed in Section 3.5.1, it has robust infrastructure to track several impacts commonly associated with citizen participation, including trust in government, trust in and satisfaction with public services, satisfaction with democracy, and broader democratic attitudes. Government instruments span periodic monitoring on public trust on government and services (Box 3.23) and population-level survey infrastructure (e.g. the ABS General Social Survey). The Government embeds the results of these into whole-of-government reporting, including for instance the Treasury and ABS Measuring What Matters Framework, with trust in public services as an indicator under the “Cohesive” theme (ABS, 2026[139]). The Department of Home Affairs further demonstrates how government considers the long-term impacts of participation in shaping strategic policy frameworks, through the Strengthening Democracy Taskforce report and its three pillars: trusted institutions, credible information, and including all Australians (Department of Home Affairs, 2024[30]). In addition, independent assurance and review mechanisms periodically audit participation-related arrangements (e.g. the Productivity Commission review of partnership arrangements under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap) (Productivity Commission, 2024[134]).
As discussed in Chapter 1, the Government of Australia leads the most institutionalised whole-of-government measurement infrastructure in Australia for long-term effects commonly associated with citizen participation (e.g. trust in government, trust in public services, satisfaction with services, and satisfaction with democracy). The APSC also contributes to OECD comparative work on trust in government and works with government and academia to deepen understanding of what drives trust and democratic resilience. While these instruments were not designed primarily to measure participation, several already capture data on whether citizens feel heard, can access information, or perceive that they have a say.
The Survey of Trust in Australian Public Services is a regular, national-level survey measuring public satisfaction, trust and experiences with Australian public services. As of July 2025, more than 82 000 people, aged 18 years and over, have participated in the survey, whose first wave of results were published in 2020. Since July 2021, the survey is run via monthly waves which collect responses from around 1 000 respondents, which builds a reliable time series for measuring citizens’ trust in government and satisfaction with democracy.
The APSC, in collaboration with the Office for Social Cohesion, also runs regular Satisfaction with Democracy pulse surveys since June 2023. Two public reports have been issued with the results of pulse surveys, in February and March 2026. At time of writing, a further pulse survey is also being developed which will include key community cohesion measures relating to citizen participation, connection with others, and belonging (see also Chapter 2). Alongside the ANU's ANUpoll, this is the only nationally representative Australian survey with the intra annual frequency that can track satisfaction with democracy and perceptions of political efficacy or “voice” across major democratic events such as referendums and elections. The APSC works with national survey providers to identify converging and diverging trends to help track national trends and align the complimentary of national surveys, including but not limited to ARDN members, Scanlon Foundation Mapping Social Cohesion, ANU Poll, McKinnon Foundation and Flinders MOSAIC.
The Trust and Satisfaction in Australian Democracy Survey, conducted in partnership with the Office for Social Cohesion (originally Strengthening Democracy Taskforce), Department of Home Affairs, engaged over 6 000 Australians in June and November 2023 on their views on democracy. It is the APSC instrument most directly relevant to measuring the broader effects of participation on citizens, with questions on whether citizens feel they have a say and perceive that public consultations meaningfully influence decisions.
Long-term Insights Briefings, modelled in part on New Zealand practice, are an institutional mechanism for forward-looking analysis of cross-cutting policy challenges. Briefings are mandated under reforms introduced by the Public Service Amendment Act 2024 and are developed through engaging Australian citizens and partnering with experts from across the APS, academia, industry, and the not-for-profit sector. As part of the 2024 Long-term Insights Briefing, a module jointly designed by the APSC and PM&C was added to the Trust and Satisfaction with Australian public services survey, surveying 4 109 Australians on which personal characteristics they think the government should consider when designing services, in which life events they would most want to be involved, the degree of involvement they prefer, and whether they had engaged with government on service design in the past 12 months. The briefing demonstrates that the APS already has the analytical and survey infrastructure to measure the demand–supply gap in participation itself, providing a transferable model for systematically tracking the longer-term effects of participation across the APS.
Internationally, Australia has participated in all OECD Trust in Government surveys since 2021, and has been a committed and engaged participant. Most recently, the APSC collaborated with the OECD by commissioning the report Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in Australia, which draws on the 2023 OECD Trust Survey.
More broadly, Australia's statistical infrastructure increasingly permits tracking the longer-term democratic outcomes that participation can often influence:
The General Social Survey is a household survey on social experiences and wellbeing conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It measures civic and political participation, volunteering, trust, and social connectedness. The survey, which moved to annual collection in 2025, provides a time series that can be disaggregated by population group. Over time, it could help track the long-term relationship between participation, government responsiveness and trust (ABS, 2025[31]). The Census contains complimentary evidence by providing national information on volunteering and unpaid work. Together, these collections can help identify who participates, who may be under-represented, and how participation varies across population groups.
The Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA), a secure national asset also managed by the ABS, links Census, tax, health and social security records for the Australian population over time. Where survey data is linked into the asset, measures of trust and participation can at times be connected to individuals' administrative records. A more systematic linkage of such data could in future support analysis of how civic outcomes vary across the population (ABS, 2026[140]).
The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), the national research body on family wellbeing, manages longitudinal studies such as Growing Up in Australia, a birth cohort study which has followed the same participants since 2004 and Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA), a cohort study of humanitarian migrants to Australia. These studies track how community involvement, belonging, and trust develop within individuals over decades. While these studies do not measure exposure to government participatory processes, they provide the evidence base on how civic capacity develops across the life course (AIFS, 2026[141]).
The National Disability Data Asset links de-identified, linked administrative data from governments to improve understanding of the experiences of people with disability across the systems and services they use in everyday life. A key objective of the NDDA is that it is trusted and supported by the disability community. This is achieved through community engagement and co-governance. The co-governance arrangements ensure the community has oversight over how their data is used, and that insights and research from the NDDA programme meet community expectations (NDDA, 2026[142]).
Most of these instruments, however, are not designed to causally attribute these long-term effects to participation activities. While most instruments cited in Box 3.23 measure trust, satisfaction, and democratic attitudes, opportunities remain to connect these more systematically to participation processes, for example through before-and-after measurements on participants’ trust, or by assessing how and whether participation shaped policy outcomes. The NIAA’s progress measurement stocktakes on formal partnerships and shared decision making under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap goes into this direction, by explicitly assessing whether the partnership model is delivering intended long-term outcomes and co-ordination of policy and programmes to agreed goals. As noted in previous sections, progress on these has been challenged.
The Australian Government also supports and draws on rich collaborations with non-government partners to monitor democratic outcomes and impacts more broadly. This includes work by ANUPoll, the Scanlon Foundation, the McKinnon Institute, the Centre for Policy Development, and the ARACY Longitudinal Studies Collaborative, among many others. Examples include MOSAIC, a survey of Australians' attitudes towards democracy (Flinders University, 2026[148]), and the Centre for Policy Development's recurring Purpose of Government Pulse (CPD, 2024[149]). Longitudinal studies such as HILDA and the Australian Temperament Project are also notable examples (Melbourne Institute, 2026[150]). In addition, the Department of Home Affairs’ Office for Social Cohesion co-chairs the Australian Resilient Democracy Network (ARDN), which brings together government, academia, and civil society to generate research and data on democratic resilience and social cohesion (see Chapter 1). The opportunity ahead can be to draw them more systematically into measurement of how participation activities by the APS contribute to longer-term democratic outcomes.
The Australian Resilient Democracy Network (ARDN), established in 2024, brings together researchers, civil society leaders and government agencies to translate evidence into practical policy ideas. Established and currently co-chaired by the Department of Home Affairs’ Office for Social Cohesion and the Australian National University’s School of Politics and International Relations, the national Network fosters sustained, relationship-based collaboration and aligns research with priority policy questions.
The Network’s initial activities focus on identifying and advancing evidence-informed approaches to strengthen democratic resilience, with particular attention around building trustworthy institutions, promoting a vibrant civic space, fostering social cohesion and enabling credible information environments. A series of recent papers have focused on what we know strengthens civic knowledge, engagement and participation across the systems, spaces and opportunities that enable connection and collective problem-solving. These papers include mapping civic life journeys, mapping access and coverage of public volunteering opportunities, and summarising evidence and approaches to expand civic education beyond the classroom and into experiential learning. The Network has also published research on how to improve measurement approaches for social cohesion. The Network complements technical research through short, actionable policy insights published inThe ARDN ARDN Discussion Paper Series.
Source: (ARDN, 2026[135])
Together, the activities of APSC, ARDN, ABS, Measuring What Matters and cross-government policy co-ordination supported by The Office for Social Cohesion distinctly positions Australia to advance OECD benchmark by piloting a dedicated framework to evaluate the long-term effects of participation. The consortium, along with other government partners, might consider further focus on measuring the impacts on trust, policy effectiveness, value for money, and government culture, following examples from France and New Zealand (Box 3.25). Results could be disseminated across the APS as case studies, building the institutional evidence base on the tangible effects of participation and supporting uptake among public sector practitioners.
Australia could also continue to build on existing efforts to collect more robust, standardised, time-series data on Australian democracy, drawing stronger and more systematic links with citizen participation. For example, while the linking with GSS into PLIDA may help better understanding of longer-term outcome of civic participation of individuals, opportunities exist to look at changes in geospatial, demographic, economic and social characteristics of communities over time and linking these to participation outcomes. Moreover, opportunities exist to strengthen the collection of more timely attitudinal data around major consultations and democratic events, either through the now annual GSS collection cycle or through developing a short, recurring participation module in the APSC’s Survey of Trust in Australian public services. This could generate the first systematic evidence base linking citizens' participation experiences to their trust in government and satisfaction with public services on an ongoing basis. Targeted population surveys around major policy moments (e.g. by timing pulse surveys immediately following a major public consultation or referendum) could allow the government to track participation-linked changes in democratic attitudes in close to real time and provide agencies with actionable insights. Building on this, future iterations of the Measuring What Matters Statement could include a dedicated indicator on civic engagement and linkages to political voice under the “Cohesive” theme. Together with the taskforce pilot, these measures could place Australia as a leader in this space, connecting participation processes to citizen-level outcomes, policy effectiveness, and the day-to-day culture of government.
France’s National Commission on Public Debate (CNDP): The CNDP is an independent administrative authority responsible for guaranteeing the public’s right to participate in decisions affecting the environment. Its role covers the entire participation process. First, it guarantees the public’s right to information, ensuring that information is transparent, accessible, understandable, comprehensive and reliable. Second, it designs participation and deliberation processes, including methods for reaching out to and involving a broad diversity of participants; for public debates, the CNDP organises the process itself. Third, it provides a faithful and comprehensive account of the arguments, questions and concerns expressed by the public. Finally, it ensures that this input is taken into consideration by decision-makers: following a public debate, project owners must publicly explain how they have responded to the issues raised and how the project has consequently been maintained, modified or abandoned. This framework creates a traceable link between public participation and decision-making. An assessment of public debates found that 58% of projects were modified in their design or objectives immediately following the debate, while three projects were abandoned and all the others changed their governance arrangements. These figures capture only changes announced directly after the debate and do not account for further changes that may occur later in the life of a project.
New Zealand’s Child Wellbeing Strategy: Demonstrating the impact of child and youth participation: New Zealand's Policy Project, based in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), produced the Demonstration Project Report: Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy as part of its Open Government Partnership work programme. The report documents the value of engaging children, young people and their families in the development of policy, both at the strategic level and on discrete subsequent initiatives. The Strategy was informed by the perspectives of more than 10 000 New Zealanders, including over 6 000 children and young people, who contributed through face-to-face meetings, submissions, postcards to the Prime Minister, and online surveys. The Report includes key themes from the participation process, as well as concrete changes made to strategic decisions and specific programmes. The Report was socialised with policymakers alongside other examples of use cases at engagement workshops, including an event to showcase with agencies the Youth Voices Project – an initiative used to build youth voice into policy.
Source: (CNDP, 2026[151]; DPMC, 2020[152])
Australia is a mature democracy with strong foundations for citizen participation, including compulsory voting, a longstanding tradition of public submissions, and internationally recognised examples of deliberative democracy and regulatory consultation. Yet, as in many OECD countries, growing expectations among citizens to have a meaningful voice in the decisions that affect their lives are emerging alongside declining trust in public institutions. In this context, fostering meaningful participation in a digital age has become not only a democratic imperative but also a core governance capability that helps governments design more legitimate and durable policy.
This chapter examined how the Australian Public Service can build on its existing strengths to embed citizen participation as a systematic, meaningful and impactful feature of policymaking, service design and delivery at the Commonwealth level. Its central finding is that Australia's challenge is not simply to “do more” participation but to govern participation more strategically and coherently across the public sector as a core governance function. To date, participation remains unevenly understood, applied and resourced across institutions and policy areas, and is often driven by immediate policy needs, legislative obligations or ministerial priorities rather than by a shared vision of its broader democratic and governance purpose. As a result, participation processes in Australia can vary considerably in quality, representativeness and impact, and are at times perceived as procedural rather than meaningful.
On most of the dimensions examined, Australia starts from a position of comparative strength. For example, the country has some of the most advanced toolkits, frameworks and capacity-building offerings on participation across the OECD. This includes a sound and well-developed baseline for measuring participation, particularly in tracking longer-term impacts on trust; and a strong foundation for digital participation built on advanced digital government capabilities and the widespread use of digital platforms across levels of government. At the same time, barriers related to digital literacy and accessibility for all Australians continue to affect participation for some Australians, particularly vulnerable groups. Existing assets such as the GovCMS “Have Your Say” module also provide a promising basis for further integration.
These strengths point to a set of opportunities rather than a need for foundational reform. For instance, Australia’s wide ecosystem of participation responsibilities and actors could benefit from a coherent whole-of-government vision underpinned by durable political commitment, clearer institutional mandates, and stronger horizontal and vertical co-ordination, including through a dedicated Centre of Excellence on Participation. Cultivating a public sector culture of participation that matches the quality of available tools could be done by embedding participation as a priority in workforce planning, public sector capability frameworks and resourcing decisions. Strengthening the evidence base on participation and maximising the impact of participation results could be promoted by developing a common set of indicators, integrating monitoring and evaluation into regular government processes, and reinforcing public accountability and institutional learning. In the digital domain, opportunities exist to strengthen coherence and consistency across the platform ecosystem through standardised user experiences, clearer guidance for agencies, interoperability across tools, and common quality standards that complement rather than replace in-person engagement. This could be a way to build towards a more cohesive digital participation infrastructure that reflects Australia's global leadership in digital government, while ensuring that digital participation remains accessible for those who face barriers related to digital literacy and access.
Finally, challenges shared across OECD countries, including declining trust in government and rising political polarisation, take on heightened relevance in Australia's current policy context, where questions of social cohesion and shared civic identity are at the forefront of the national agenda. Drawing on international practice, opportunities exist to complement ongoing government efforts with a strategic, fit-for-purpose participation exercise, as illustrated by the case study on a potential National Dialogue on belonging and shared civic identity.
The following recommendations seek to build on existing innovative practices and respond to the abovementioned challenges, in line with the OECD Recommendation on Open Government.
Advancing a coherent whole-of-government commitment to citizen participation
To strengthen government efficiency, reduce duplication and consultation fatigue, improve accountability for participation outcomes, and build more coherent and trusted interactions between citizens and the public sector, the Australian Government could consider to:
Formally articulate citizen participation as a whole-of-government priority through high-level political and administrative leadership mechanisms, including Ministerial statements, Secretaries Board endorsement, and integration into senior public service leadership expectations.
Strengthen coherence across existing participation frameworks by clarifying shared definitions, minimum expectations, institutional responsibilities, and linkages between current strategies, guidance, and reform agendas.
Consider establishing a Centre for Excellence on Participation or policy co-ordination function to support piloting innovation, cross-government co-ordination, guidance, capacity building, institutional learning, and communities of practice on participation. Identify where such a function could most effectively sit within government and the level of resourcing required.
Building horizontal and vertical co-ordination on participation by creating dedicated cross-government co-ordination mechanisms, scaling existing good practices (e.g. partnership stocktakes and community liaison models), and strengthening collaboration between Commonwealth, state, territory, and local governments.
Integrate digital participation more systematically into participation governance frameworks.
Building a culture of participation in the Australian Public Service
To build a strong and cohesive culture of participation and strengthen participation skills and readiness of the Australian Public Service, the Government could consider to:
Ensure regular trainings and up-to-date guidance on citizen participation addresses the most common challenges faced by the APS (e.g. building skills to engage citizens directly, strengthening cultural capability and engaging with various population groups) and support officials at all levels, including the Senior Executive Service, to use the right resource for the right context.
Embed participation as a core competency across APS frameworks by anchoring it in the workforce architecture and connecting tools such as the Agency Engagement Maturity Assessment to corporate planning, public reporting and performance mechanisms.
Integrate digital participation into citizen participation training pathways.
Leverage existing assets and structures to better integrate and resource participation. This could be done by designating participation contact points within existing positions and further amplifying the impact of existing trusted civic institutions, including public libraries, to support community engagement, digital access to all and participation.
Convene a high-level citizen participation process on a national priority where a policy window exists (e.g. social cohesion), designed as a demonstration case with visible political sponsorship, a replicable methodology and a monitoring and evaluation framework, and disseminate the resulting evidence and tools across the public sector to build a shared understanding of how participation is done well and how its success is measured.
Measuring and demonstrating the added value of participation in Australia
To strengthen public sector capacities to measure, make the most of, and demonstrate the added value of participation, the Australian Government could consider to:
Develop a concise, whole-of-government baseline set of indicators for evaluating the quality of participation processes, embed it into routine evaluations of governance processes, and aggregate evaluation outcomes through a centralised evidence base to strengthen participation quality consistency, institutional learning, accountability, and system-wide monitoring across the APS.
Establish a whole-of-government standard for “closing the loop” to citizens on the outcomes of participation processes, including through common reporting templates, and integration into existing APS performance and audit frameworks. Leveraging existing digital infrastructure, internal data sharing frameworks, and using artificial intelligence could enable such outcomes to be then leveraged and reused across the public sector.
Consider developing Annual Participation Reports, aggregating data already captured through departmental consultation hubs on participation opportunities, to strengthen cross-government visibility of participation activities.
Pilot an initiative to evaluate the long-term impacts of participation, including effects on trust, policy effectiveness, public value, and government culture. Building on this, consider building on APSC efforts to collect robust, standardised, time series data on Australian democracy, systematically drawing links between participation processes and their impact.
References
[139] ABS (2026), “Measuring What Matters themes and indicators”, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/measuring-what-matters/measuring-what-matters-themes-and-indicators.
[140] ABS (2026), “Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA)”, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/data-integration/integrated-data/person-level-integrated-data-asset-plida.
[31] ABS (2025), “General Social Survey: Summary Results, Australia”, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/general-social-survey-summary-results-australia/latest-release.
[99] AEC (2026), “Community education”, https://www.aec.gov.au/community/.
[21] AEC (2026), “Compulsory Voting”, https://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/publications/voting/.
[20] AEC (2025), “Participation in the 2025 federal election”, https://www.aec.gov.au/election/fe25/participation-rates.htm.
[100] AEC (2023), “New Indigenous enrolment record: An in-depth look”, https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2023/08-03.htm.
[141] AIFS (2026), “Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children”, https://www.dss.gov.au/long-term-research/growing-australia-longitudinal-study-australian-children.
[24] ALGA (2026), “Who We Are”, https://www.rda.gov.au/about/who-we-are.
[39] Alnemr, N. et al. (2023), “Advancing deliberative reform in a parliamentary system: prospects for recursive representation”, European Political Science Review, Vol. 16/2, pp. 242-259, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000292.
[128] ALRC (2026), “Australian Law Reform Commission Act 1996”, https://www.alrc.gov.au/about/law-reform-process/.
[82] ANAO (2025), “Administration of the Impact Analysis Framework”, https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/administration-of-the-impact-analysis-framework.
[120] ANAO (2025), “Treasury’s Design and Implementation of the Measuring What Matters Framework”, https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/treasurys-design-and-implementation-of-the-measuring-what-matters-framework.
[147] ANU (2026), “ANUpoll”, https://polis.cass.anu.edu.au/research/surveys/anupoll.
[83] ANZSOG (2026), “ANZSOG”, https://anzsog.edu.au/.
[73] APSA (2026), APS Craft, https://www.apsacademy.gov.au/aps-craft.
[78] APSA (2026), “APSA Engagement and Partnership Resources”, https://www.apsacademy.gov.au/aps-craft/engagement-partnership#resources.
[75] APSA (2026), Engagement & Partnership, https://www.apsacademy.gov.au/aps-craft/engagement-partnership.
[34] APSA (2022), “Policy cycle: A ‘good process’ test for making public policy”, https://www.apsacademy.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-04/22-016%20-%20Toolkit-TheoryBites-31Mar22_05_Policy%20cycle.pdf.
[144] APSC (2026), “Satisfaction with Australian Democracy Pulse reports”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/workforce-information/research-analysis-and-publications/trust-australian-public-services/satisfaction-australian-democracy-pulse-reports.
[119] APSC (2025), “Capability Review: Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-01/Department%20of%20the%20Prime%20Minister%20and%20Cabinet%20Capability%20Review%20-%20Accessible.pdf.
[143] APSC (2025), “Trust in Australian public services”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/workforce-information/research-analysis-and-publications/trust-australian-public-services.
[89] APSC (2024), 2023-24 State of the Service Report, https://www.apsc.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/workforce-information/research-analysis-and-publications/state-service/state-service-report-2023-24.
[97] APSC (2024), “Annual Progress Report”, https://www.apsreform.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/APS%20Reform%20Annual%20Progress%20Report%202024_Accessible.pdf.
[146] APSC (2024), “Long-term insights briefings”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/workforce-information/research-analysis-and-publications/state-service/state-service-report-2023-24/fit-future/long-term-insights-briefings.
[15] APSC (2024), “Public perceptions of civic engagement and representation: 2024 TAPS Module Survey Results”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/workforce-information/research-analysis-and-publications/trust-australian-public-services/public-perceptions-civic-engagement-and-representation-report.
[35] APSC (2024), “Trust in Australian Public Services 2024 Annual Report”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/Trust%20in%20Australian%20public%20services%202024%20Annual%20Report_0.pdf.
[131] APSC (2023), “The Charter of Partnerships and Engagement”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/aps-news/charter-partnerships-and-engagement.
[145] APSC (2023), “Trust and Satisfaction in Australian Democracy”, https://www.apsc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/Feb%202024%20-%20Democracy%20Report%20-%20with%20Alt%20text_V2.pdf.
[69] ARDN (2026), “Disasters and democratic resilience: evidence suggesting the need for a long-term community approach and new monitoring systems”, https://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/files/docs/2026/3/Resilient-Democracy---Discussion-Paper-14---Disasters-and-Democracy---Rogers-et-al---For-web_0.pdf.
[135] ARDN (2026), “Mapping the civic life journey: summary of 2025 cross-sector data and policy hackathon”, Australian Resilient Democracy Network Report, https://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/files/docs/2026/5/Civic-life-journey---report-FINAL.pdf.
[116] Australian Centre for Evaluation (n.d.), Commonwealth Evaluation Policy, https://evaluation.treasury.gov.au/about/commonwealth-evaluation-policy (accessed on 19 April 2026).
[22] Australian Department of Health (2021), “Australian Government Response to the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety”, https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/05/australian-government-response-to-the-final-report-of-the-royal-commission-into-aged-care-quality-and-safety.pdf.
[126] Australian Government (2026), “Royal Commissions Act 1902”, https://www.legislation.gov.au/C1902A00012/latest/versions.
[90] Australian Government (2025), AI Plan for the Australian Public Service, https://www.digital.gov.au/policy/ai/australian-public-service-ai-plan-2025/people.
[91] Australian Government (2025), Digital Experience Policy, https://www.digital.gov.au/policy/digital-experience.
[127] Australian Government (2024), “Productivity Commission Act 1998”, https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A05326/latest/text.
[88] Australian Government (2023), “The final Data and Digital Government Strategy released,”, https://www.finance.gov.au/about-us/news/2023/final-data-and-digital-government-strategy-released.
[7] Australian Government (2023), The Charter of Partnerships and Engagement, https://www.apsreform.gov.au/news/charter-partnerships-and-engagement.
[6] Australian Government (2019), “Glossary”, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/aps-framework-engagement-and-participation/glossary.
[122] Australian Government (2019), “Legislation Act 2003”, https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A01224/latest/text.
[44] Australian Government (2019), The APS Framework For Engagement and Participation, https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/August%202021/document/aps-framework-for-engagement-and-participation.pdf.
[47] Australian Government Office for Youth (2024), “Engage! strategy”, https://www.youth.gov.au/office-youth/engage-strategy.
[70] Bherer, L., M. Gauthier and L. Simard (2017), “The Professionalization of Public Participation”, Routledge, https://www.participation-et-democratie.fr/the-professionalization-of-public-participation-0.
[71] Blijleven, W. (2023), “Expert, bureaucrat, facilitator: the role of expert public servants in interactive governance”, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03003930.2022.2047028.
[87] Burtscher, M., S. Piano and B. Welby (2024), “Developing skills for digital government: A review of good practices across OECD governments”, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 303, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f4dab2e9-en.
[72] Bynner, C., O. Escobar and S. Weakley (2023), “Facilitators as culture change workers: advancing public participation and deliberation in local governance”, Taylor & Francis Journals, https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2023.2190586.
[18] Cameron, S. (2025), “Trends in Civic Engagement in Australia”, https://polis.cass.anu.edu.au/files/docs/2025/6/Resilient-Democracy---Discussion-Paper-04---Cameron.pdf.
[53] CIPC (2026), “Centre interministériel de la participation citoyenne”, https://www.modernisation.gouv.fr/associer-les-citoyens/centre-interministeriel-de-la-participation-citoyenne.
[26] City of Hamburg (2026), DIPAS, https://www.hamburg.de/politik-und-verwaltung/behoerden/behoerde-fuer-stadtentwicklung-und-wohnen/themen/stadtentwicklung/dipas-1070716.
[151] CNDP (2026), “Rapports d’activité”, https://www.debatpublic.fr/rapports-dactivite-5287.
[149] CPD (2024), “Purpose of Government Pulse”, https://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2024-Purpose-of-Government-Pulse-report.pdf.
[49] DCCEEW (2024), “First Nations Clean Energy Strategy 2024–2030”, https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-12/First%20Nations%20Clean%20Energy%20Strategy.pdf.
[60] Department of Home Affairs (2026), “Community engagement”, https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/social-cohesion/community-engagement.
[30] Department of Home Affairs (2024), “Strengthening Australian Democracy: a practical agenda for democratic resilience”, https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us-subsite/Pages/taskforces/strengthening-democracy-taskforce.aspx.
[115] Department of Industry, Science and Resources (2021), APS framework for engagement and participation, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/aps-framework-engagement-and-participation.
[132] DISR (2026), “Engagement standards”, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/aps-framework-engagement-and-participation/engagement-standards.
[129] DISR (2017), “Australian Government response: Productivity Commission inquiry into intellectual property arrangements”, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/australian-government-response-productivity-commission-inquiry-intellectual-property-arrangements.
[54] DPMC (2026), “Community Engagement”, https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/our-programmes/policy-project/policy-tools/community-engagement.
[66] DPMC (2026), “Policy Systems Leadership”, https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/our-programmes/policy-project/policy-community/policy-system-leadership.
[106] DPMC (2023), “Community Engagement Design Tool”, https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2023-10/policy-project-community-engagement-design-tool-editable-oct23.pdf.
[65] DPMC (2023), “Policy Skills Framework”, https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2023-07/policy-skills-framework-2023.pdf.
[152] DPMC (2020), “Policy Project Demonstration Project Report”, https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2020-12/policyproject-demonstration-project-report-dec20.pdf.
[96] Engagement Institute (2026), “EngageMark”, https://engagementinstitute.org.au/engagemark/.
[104] Engagement Institute (2026), “Strategic Engagement: Democracy’s Urgent Task”, https://engagementinstitute.org.au/resources/thought-leadership-series/.
[8] Engagement Institute (2018), “IAP2 Spectrum of Engagement”, https://go.engagementinstitute.org.au/iap2spectrum?_gl=1*2uh9ba*_gcl_au*MTc2NDkwNjk1NC4xNzcxOTQ2OTkw*_ga*MTMzMjE0MDgxNy4xNzU1NzYxNjYx*_ga_0NQLDQ57B9*czE3NzU5OTQyNDkkbzIyJGcxJHQxNzc1OTk0MjU3JGo1MiRsMCRoMA.
[80] Ercan, A. et al. (2025), “Guidebook for Deliberative Engagement: Key Features and Practical Insights”, https://researchprofiles.canberra.edu.au/en/publications/guidebook-for-deliberative-engagement-key-features-and-practical-/.
[52] Finland’s Ministry of Justice (2025), “Implementation of the Democracy Programme 2025-2027”, https://oikeusministerio.fi/en/project?tunnus=OM020:00/2025.
[148] Flinders University (2026), “MOSAIC”, https://www.flinders.edu.au/jeff-bleich-centre/mosaic.
[14] Fragetta, M. (ed.) (2025), “Can participatory budgeting mitigate government debt risk？—An empirical analysis using cross-national panel data”, PLOS One, Vol. 20/12, p. e0324411, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324411.
[32] General Social Survey (2014), “General Social Survey 2014”, https://www.education.gov.au/integrated-data-research/benefits-educational-attainment/civic-engagement-tolerance-and-trust.
[94] Gerson, D. (2020), “Leadership for a high performing civil service: Towards senior civil service systems in OECD countries”, OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, No. 40, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ed8235c8-en.
[12] Gonçalves, S. (2014), “The Effects of Participatory Budgeting on Municipal Expenditures and Infant Mortality in Brazil”, World Development, Vol. 53, pp. 94-110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.009.
[45] Government of Australia (2020), National Agreement on Closing the Gap, https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/national-agreement.
[108] Government of Finland (2026), “Description of the National dialogue process and dialogue round”, https://kansallisetdialogit.fi/en/about-national-dialogues/description-of-the-national-dialogue-process-and-dialogue-round/.
[50] Government of Western Australia (2024), “WA Youth Action Plan 2024-2027”, https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-communities/wa-youth-action-plan-2024-2027.
[63] Hanson, A. (2023), “What does it take to set up and run government communities of practice for anticipation and foresight? Part 1”, https://oecd-opsi.org/blog/what-does-it-take-to-set-up-and-run-government-communities-of-practice-for-anticipation-and-foresight-part-1/.
[38] Hendriks, C. and J. Lees-Marshment (2019), Political Leaders and Public Engagement: The Hidden World of Informal Elite–Citizen Interaction, Political Studies, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0032321718791370#bibr52-0032321718791370.
[76] innovate(us) (2026), “Designing Democratic Engagement with AI: Practical Strategies for Public Participation”, https://innovate-us.org/course/democratic-engagement-for-ai-era/.
[67] MAV (2026), “Municipal Association of Victoria”, https://www.mav.asn.au/.
[28] McDonnell, J. (2023), “Conserving the Councillor: A Case for Widespread Local Officeholding”, Australian Journal of Politics & History, Vol. 69/2, pp. 302-324, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12840.
[27] McDonnell, J. (2022), “Municipality size and political participation: evidence from Australia”, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 58/1, pp. 70-87, https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2022.2132915.
[84] McKinnon Institute (2026), “McKinnon Institute”, https://mckinnon.co/leadership/mckinnon-institute.
[150] Melbourne Institute (2026), “HILDA”, https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda.
[101] MoAD (2025), “Democracy in a box ”, https://www.moadoph.gov.au/learn/democracy-in-a-box.
[114] Nabatchi, T. (2012), “A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation,”, ICMA, https://icma.org/sites/default/files/303516_A%20Managers%20Guide%20to%20Evaluating%20Citizen%20Participation.pdf.
[142] NDDA (2026), “Connecting data to empower lives”, https://www.ndda.gov.au/.
[48] NDIS (2021), “Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021-2031”, https://www.ndis.gov.au/understanding/australias-disability-strategy-2021-2031.
[111] New Zealand Ministry for Ethnic Communities (2025), “New Zealand’s Muslim and Jewish organisations sign Harmony Accord at Government House”, https://www.ethniccommunities.govt.nz/news/new-zealands-muslim-and-jewish-organisations-sign-harmony-accord-at-government-house.
[110] New Zealand Ministry of Social Development (2026), “Te Korowai Whetū Social Cohesion tools and resources”, https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/community/social-cohesion/tools-and-resources.html.
[138] Newton, K. and B. Geissel (eds.) (2012), Evaluating Democratic Innovations, Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203155196.
[133] NIAA (2025), “Commonwealth Closing the Gap 2025 Annual Report and 2026 Implementation Plan”, https://www.niaa.gov.au/resource-centre/commonwealth-closing-gap-2025-annual-report-and-2026-implementation-plan.
[59] NIAA (2024), “2024 Commonwealth Partnership Stocktake”, https://admin.niaa.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2025-08/2024-Cth-CTG-Partnership-Stocktake.pdf.
[121] NIAA (2023), “Co-Design Lessons Learned Report”, https://www.niaa.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2024-05/co-design-lessons-learned-report.pdf.
[77] Noveck, B., N. Biddle and A. Fischer (2026), “Learning to Listen: Why Public Engagement Is the AI Skill Australia’s Governments Are Missing.”, https://australiandemocraticresilience.substack.com/p/learning-to-listen-why-ai-assisted.
[13] No, W. and L. Hsueh (2020), “How a participatory process with inclusive structural design allocates resources toward poor neighborhoods: the case of participatory budgeting in Seoul, South Korea”, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 88/3, pp. 663-681, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320943668.
[103] NSLA (2024), “Australians return to libraries in record numbers as cost-of-living drives demand for free public services”, https://www.nsla.org.au/news/australians-return-to-libraries-in-record-numbers-as-cost-of-living-drives-demand-for-free-public-services/.
[136] OAIC (2023), “Information Publication Scheme review survey 2023”, https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-information/freedom-of-information-guidance-for-government-agencies/proactive-publication-and-administrative-access/information-publication-scheme/information-publication-scheme-review-survey-2023.
[98] OECD (2026), Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Citizen Participation: Typology of Applications, Opportunities and Challenges for Democratic Innovation, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a1ee2e0a-en.
[3] OECD (2026), OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions 2026 Results: Navigating Rising Expectations and New Horizons, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9eb63fec-en.
[29] OECD (2025), Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in Australia, Building Trust in Public Institutions, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/28a876c2-en.
[112] OECD (2025), Exploring New Frontiers in Citizen Participation in the Policy Cycle, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/77f5098c-en.
[17] OECD (2025), “OECD Deliberative Democracy Database”, https://airtable.com/appP4czQlAU1My2M3/shrX048tmQLl8yzdc/tblrttW98WGpdnX3Y/viwX5ZutDDGdDMEep.
[9] OECD (2025), Open Government for the Green Transition: Panorama of Good Practices Towards Meaningful Citizen Participation, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/bfa02935-en.
[2] OECD (2024), “Exploring New Frontiers of Citizen Participation in the Policy Cycle”, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/about/programmes/reinforcing-democracy-initiative/Exploring-New-Frontiers-of-Citizen-Participation-Discussion-Paper.pdf.
[153] OECD (2024), “Recommendation of the Council on Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying and Influence”, OECD Legal Instruments, OECD/LEGAL/0379, OECD, Paris, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0379.
[42] OECD (2023), OECD Public Governance Reviews: Czech Republic: Towards a More Modern and Effective Public Administration, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/41fd9e5c-en.
[1] OECD (2023), Open Government for Stronger Democracies: A Global Assessment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5478db5b-en.
[86] OECD (2023), Public Employment and Management 2023: Towards a More Flexible Public Service, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5b378e11-en.
[37] OECD (2022), OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f765caf6-en.
[109] OECD (2021), Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in Finland, Building Trust in Public Institutions, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/52600c9e-en.
[113] OECD (2021), Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/10ccbfcb-en.
[16] OECD (2021), OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2021, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/38b0fdb1-en.
[36] OECD (2020), Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes for Public Decision Making, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-issue-focus/innovative-citizen-participation/good-practice-principles-for-deliberative-processes-for-public-decision-making.pdf.
[4] OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
[93] OECD (2019), “Recommendation of the Council on Public Service Leadership and Capability”, OECD Legal Instruments, OECD/LEGAL/0445, OECD, Paris, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0445.
[5] OECD (2017), “Recommendation of the Council on Open Government”, OECD Legal Instruments, OECD/LEGAL/0438, OECD, Paris, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0438.
[95] OECD (2017), Skills for a High Performing Civil Service, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264280724-en.
[105] OECD (forthcoming), OECD Guidebook on Strategic Citizen Participation, OECD Publishing, Paris.
[43] OECD (forthcoming), Public Governance Review of Ukraine, OECD Publishing, Paris.
[117] Office of Impact Analysis (2023), Best practice consultation, https://oia.pmc.gov.au/resources/guidance-oia-procedures/best-practice-consultation (accessed on 19 April 2026).
[46] OGP (2023), Australia’s Third OGP National Action Plan, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Australia_Action-Plan_2023-2025_December.pdf.
[118] OIA (2026), “Australian Government Impact Analysis Framework”, https://oia.pmc.gov.au/resources/australian-government-impact-analysis-framework/step-1-preliminary-analysis.
[130] OIA (2026), “Office of Impact Analysis”, https://oia.pmc.gov.au/.
[81] OIA (2023), “Best Practice Consultation”, https://oia.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/best-practice-consultation.pdf.
[10] Orazani, S., K. Reynolds and H. Osborne (2023), “What works and why in interventions to strengthen social cohesion: A systematic review”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. Volume 53, Issue 10, pp. 938-995, https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12990.
[102] PEO (2026), “PEO at a glance”, https://peo.gov.au/connect-with-the-peo/get-to-know-the-peo/peo-at-a-glance.
[61] PM&C (2026), “Australian Government Crisis Management Framework (AGCMF)”, https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/australian-government-crisis-management-framework-agcmf/crisis-coordination/decision-making-and-coordination-mechanisms.
[62] PM&C (2024), “Australian Government response to the Independent Review of Commonwealth funding for strategic policy work”, https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/australian-government-response-independent-review-commonwealth-funding-strategic-policy-work.
[55] Presidency of the Republic of Brazil (2026), “Brasil Participativo”, https://www.gov.br/participamaisbrasil/sobre.
[40] Prime Minister of Canada (2021), “Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Mandate Letter”, https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-letters/2021/12/16/minister-justice-and-attorney-general-canada-mandate-letter.
[41] Prime Minister of Canada (2015), “Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Mandate Letter”, https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-letters/2015/11/12/archived-minister-public-safety-and-emergency-preparedness-mandate.
[33] Productivity Commission (2026), “Inquiries, research and advice requested by government”, https://www.pc.gov.au/about/core-functions/inquiries-research-advice/.
[134] Productivity Commission (2024), “Closing the Gap review”, https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries-and-research/closing-the-gap-review/report/.
[85] Productivity Commission (2024), “Review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap Study Report”, https://assets.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/closing-the-gap-review/report/closing-the-gap-review-report.pdf.
[74] PWSS (2025), “Independent Review of Resourcing in Parliamentarian Offices - Final Report”, https://www.pwss.gov.au/sites/default/files/Final%20Report%20of%20the%20Independent%20Review%20of%20Resourcing%20in%20Parliamentary%20Offices_Accessible%20July%2031.pdf.
[92] Queensland Government (2024), Digital community engagement guideline, https://www.forgov.qld.gov.au/information-technology/queensland-government-enterprise-architecture-qgea/qgea-directions-and-guidance/qgea-policies-standards-and-guidelines/digital-community-engagement-guideline.
[137] SCMU (2026), “Public consultations”, https://www.kmu.gov.ua/gromadskosti/gromadyanske-suspilstvo-i-vlada/konsultaciyi-z-gromadskistyu.
[57] Scott, I. and T. Gong (2021), “Coordinating government silos: challenges and opportunities”, Global Public Policy and Governance, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43508-021-00004-z.
[125] Scottish Government (2022), “Scotland’s National Standards for Community Engagement”, https://blogs.gov.scot/participation/2022/06/29/1313/.
[107] Simon Fraser University, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue (2025), A maturity model for public participation, https://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/what-we-do/knowledge-practice/resources/maturity-model.html.
[64] Smith, A. (2016), “Knowledge by Association: Communities of Practice in Public Management”, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265780325_Knowledge_by_association_Communities_of_practice_in_public_management.
[51] State Government of Victoria (2021), “Public Engagement Framework 2021-25”, https://www.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-12/Public%20Engagement%20Framework%20-%2018%20November%202021_0.pdf.
[58] Thodey, D. (2019), “Independent Review of the Australian Public Service”, https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/independent-review-aps.pdf.
[11] Touchton, M. and B. Wampler (2013), “Improving Social Well-Being Through New Democratic Institutions”, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 47/10, pp. 1442-1469, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414013512601.
[124] VAGO (2017), “Public Participation in Government Decision-Making VAGO Report”, https://www.audit.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/20170510-PP-Decision-Making.pdf?.
[123] VAGO (2015), “Public Participation in Government Decision-making: Better practice guide”, https://www.audit.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/20150130-Public-Participation-BPG.pdf.
[79] Victorian Government (2021), “Public Engagement Framework 2021-2025”, https://www.vic.gov.au/public-engagement-framework-2021-2025.
[25] Victorian Legislation (2020), “Local Government Act 2020”, https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/in-force/acts/local-government-act-2020.
[56] Vivier, E. and D. Sanchez-Betancourt (2023), “Participatory governance and the capacity to engage: A systems lens”, Public Administration and Development, https://doi.org/10.1002/pad.2012.
[19] WAEC (2025), “2025 WA Local government elections – all results now declared”, https://www.google.com/search?q=WA+local+government+elections+2025+turnout&oq=WA+local+g&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgkIABBFGDsY-QcyCQgAEEUYOxj5BzIGCAEQRRg5MgYIAhBFGDwyCAgDEOkHGPxV0gEIMjgyOWowajSoAgCwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
[68] WALGA (2026), “WALGA”, https://walga.asn.au/.
[23] Wright, K., S. Swain and K. McPhillips (2017), “The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse”, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213417303678.
← 1. Australia is an adherent to the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying and Influence, and further analysis on lobbying falls outside of the scope of this review (OECD, 2024[153]).