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Since the 1980s UK government enthusiasm for market reforms has reconfigured the nature and scope of public services. Initially the marketisation of public services changed how public services were provided, increasingly market reforms and pro business policies have also modified the formation and understanding of public policy problematics and how they ought to be resolved. This is particularly noticeable when markets work imperfectly or even fail. UK governments have shown their reluctance to employ regulatory instruments to change the behaviour of companies preferring instead to make use of softer interventions, by focusing on providing advice for consumers and urging individuals to act responsibly. The dilemmas of this approach are explored by discussing the UK's former Labour government's (1997–2010) response to the increase in the incidence of obesity and related health complications.

Multifaceted issues such as safety, social inclusion, poverty, mobility, rural development, city regeneration or labour market integration require integrated approaches in their steering. Governments are looking for instruments that can address the boundary-spanning nature of many social problems. In their quest to achieve valued social outcomes, they struggle with their new role, and the inadequacy of both market working and government-led central agency. After three decades of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms, the strengths and weaknesses of this philosophy have become widely apparent. Fragmentation is a prominent observation in many evaluations of the NPM approach. The fragmentation of both policy and implementation lead to unsatisfactory public outcomes and a heightened experience of a loss of control on the part of policymakers. Achieving valued and sustainable outcomes requires collaboration between government departments, private actors, non-profit organisations, and citizens and requires tools that integrate the lessons of NPM with the new necessities of coordinated public governance. The public administration literature has in recent years been concerned with the ‘what's next?’ question, and many alternatives to NPM have been proposed.

Country and cultural heritage are inextricably linked for First Nations peoples. This chapter explores those relationships in the context of repatriating cultural heritage materials back to Country and conceptualising a place for its ‘awakening’ for the Ngadjuri community of Mid-North South Australia. These materials in the context of this book ‘interpreted’ as a form of data curation, requiring potentially unique information systems designs to achieve accessibility, recoverability, and durability in remote communities with limited internet and mobile phone coverage. On the other hand, it is critically important to note, that the processes, challenges and repatriation of culturally sensitive materials and remains, are dependant here on the limitations of language. The reference to the notion of ‘data’ as a descriptor, and an inadequate term on some level, does not, and is not intended to, diminish any of their cultural significance and gravity. These are challenges that are worth the intellectual and technological investment to realise a return to Country for generationally displaced peoples and their cultural property that also needs to make it home.