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This chapter looks at Australian public libraries and how they have developed and delivered inclusive service to people with disabilities over the past decade or so. As digital technology impacts the public library sector the question of “how are libraries responding?” emerges, especially for the one in five Australians living with disabilities. This chapter is focused on how the public library network is delivering digitally inclusive services to people with disabilities.

The approach was to examine the international obligations, related governance, and professional standards that apply to Australian Public libraries; the current disability and digital inclusion related research from the past decade; and highlight some of the better examples of practice in Australian public library service.

This chapter is not a comprehensive examination but rather a summary scan of digital inclusion practice. However, it raises a number of questions for further investigation: research as to how these obligations are put into practice; how they can be better shared and learnt from; and more importantly how the aspiration of “inclusion for all” is being met.

Australia is one of the Anglophone countries that readily adapted to a public management approach. Reforms since the 1980s have shown remarkable breadth, longevity and significance. The reforms acknowledge failure of existing approaches and the need to address management deficiencies, fiscal stress and increased complexity. This chapter discusses four cases, reflecting leadership from core agencies as well as executives. Financial management reform was initially led by Finance, and then a broader agenda was pursued through a senior management committee under the Department of the Prime. However, devolution of responsibilities from central agencies did not appear to make managers more accountable. Finance was weakened by devolution and unable to exercise appropriate leadership, and agencies did not integrate performance management reform with internal planning processes. By contrast, a one-stop shopping service for welfare was successful, although later folded in the Department of Human Services. DPMC also launched reform process in the 2010s, although not a priority of the prime minister, some recommendations, such as leadership development and talent management, were implemented that increased public service capacity. The case of Australia shows that in spite of variable political support and leadership by central agencies, a relatively stable environment (governments serving multiple terms) allowed implementation to proceed in the mid-term, including incentives to ensure responsiveness at department levels.

Various aspects of managerial and professional employees in Australia are examined in an attempt to establish if the Australian experience is similar to that reported in other countries where “management” appears to have emerged as a third force between the employers and organised labour. It is argued that the new style manager is a younger, more highly educated “professional” but that the managerial function is also changing. A survey, conducted in Australia during 1985 of senior executives and 14 large scale organisations from both the public and private sector, provides the basis for this report of the changing characteristics of managerial and professional employees in Australia. Areas explored include the proportion of managers and professionals as a percentage of the labour force; particular characteristics which are emerging; education levels and qualifications; the process governing the movement of managers within the labour market; the effect of recent legislation on remuneration systems; and the degree of union membership among managers.

The Australia Card policy proposal of 1985‐87 is used as a focus to review the growing emergence of information technology as a significant influence on policy formation and implementation in the commonwealth public service. The history of science and technology leading to information technology in the public service is discussed, particularly recent pressures to use information technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether disciplinary background and work experience significantly influence university students' views on working and preferences for organisations and work attributes.

The data were collected by a questionnaire. This paper briefly reviews the literature of Australian public sector reforms and the impact on the public sector as a potential employment location. The work values of young workers are subsequently presented, including the influence of disciplinary background and work experience on these values.

The respondents' disciplinary background, and to a smaller extent, work experience were found to significantly affect their views on working and preferences for organisations and work attributes.

Sample size was small and derived from one university. More research should be carried out on students from other Australian universities before any generalisation can be made with any degree of confidence. Future research can also examine the reasons behind the traits uncovered among the younger generation for a better understanding of their motives and views.

The study shows the importance of effective recruitment strategies for attracting university students to the public sector, communicating the opportunities offered and minimising any misconceptions about the image of public service. The presence of a public service ethic among respondents who were favourably predisposed to public service may suggest that this attribute could be leveraged to the government's advantage during recruitment.

Although money may not be a primary factor that drew the respondents who displayed the public service ethic trait to government service, they did not in any way disregard the importance of salary as a motivator. Recruiters should therefore not overlook or downplay the significance of a fair salary. A useful source for HR managers who are contemplating improvement in their recruitment strategies, with an emphasis on those aimed at university graduates.

With their focus on private companies, histories of personnel management and human resource management have neglected the much earlier development of these practices in public sector organisations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the origins and development of modern personnel management in the Australian colonial public services between 1856 and 1901 in order to set the record straight about when, why and how integrated and formal sets of personnel management practices were adopted in organisations to manage employees.

The research is based on close examination of public service legislation enacted between 1856 and 1901 in the Australian colonies, the reports of Royal Commissions and Inquiries on the public services and the evidence they gathered, and published histories on public service organisations.

This paper finds that a clear model of systematic personnel management evolved in Australia's colonial public services between 1856 and 1901. While the development and diffusion of personnel management techniques in the public sector varied considerably among the colonies in scope, nature, effectiveness and longevity, there were integrated, coherent sets of personnel policies and practices in place in several colonies several decades before their emergence in private firms.

In tracing the origins of personnel management in Australia to the colonial public services in the years following the granting of responsible government in 1856, this paper challenges the conventional understanding of personnel management as a twentieth century phenomenon of private companies.

This paper attempts to replace the understanding of public sector accountability as a linear and hierarchical process with one in which accountability occurs within a network of social relationships. It associates the former approach with the introduction of New Public Management principles in Australian public administration. It investigates the effect of this on the ability of Australia's indigenous people both to access democratic accountability as citizens, and to develop their community organisations as service providers.

The paper is based on field experience with aboriginal community organisations and critical assessment of the literature on this aspect of Australian public administration.

The paper finds that New Public Management approaches in Australian public administration have not led to greater political accountability but the reverse. As a disadvantaged, culturally distinct minority, aboriginal people are the subject of, rather than partners in, accountability regimes which mire their community service organisations in reporting requirements at the expense of practical activity. In some respects Aborigines are dealt with as individual citizen/clients, at other times as a disadvantaged minority group, and third, as culturally distinct polities. Each of these approaches implies different forms of accountability both by Aborigines to the state and by the state to them.

This analysis is inherently interpretative rather than exclusively empirical. However, greater efficiency as well as culturally appropriate outcomes can be found by instituting regional regimes of reciprocal accountability.

The analysis of developments in public administration is rarely brought to bear on Australian indigenous affairs.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Australian public libraries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of management, planning and communication. The study also investigated operational approaches to the development and implementation of new and adapted models of service and resource delivery.

Utilising a multiple qualitative case study approach, interviews were conducted with 15 Australian public library staff members at three library services – one inner-city, one regional and one remote. Inductive thematic analysis was employed to generate insights into the operations and management strategies employed during the COVID-19 crisis.

Findings suggest that public library managers performed admirably in the face of significant logistical, budgetary and regulatory challenges. Five key themes emerged to represent the ways in which public library leaders responded effectively to the crisis: resourcefulness, flexibility, presence, sensitivity and communication. Results also demonstrate the importance placed on library users’ welfare.

This research represents the first study to focus on the response of Australian public library managers to the significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify the strategies employed by library leaders to respond effectively. In doing so this research provides valuable insights into how public library managers can prepare for future crises.

The purpose of this paper is to seek an understanding of the role of government communication in Australia by examining perspectives on the extent to which public servant communicators persuade or engage the Australian public.

Themes from the public relations literature into the role and function of public relations are used in a qualitative analysis of key government documents and in‐depth interviews conducted with public servants, political staffers, journalists and interest group representatives.

This research found a diversity of views regarding the role communication does and should play within government. Participants without formal experience or education in communication generally viewed the function as one of persuasion and dissemination of information whereas the more experienced argued for more of an engagement with the public. A lack of detailed knowledge and/or use of public relations principles appears to be limiting the understanding of the role and purpose of government communication in Australia.

The research is conducted in an Australian context only and uses a qualitative approach that should not be generalised without further research.

Continued cynicism about the role of public relations in government does little to improve the quality of communication between a government and its public. This paper provides an opportunity for reflection on the purpose of government communication and the role of the public servant.

Previous studies in this area have generally focused on political communication in the sense of partisan or party‐political messages of government. This paper explores the concept from a bureaucratic perspective.