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Last updated: 26 September 2006
What structure works best?
What is the best structure for your task?
The right culture and skills underpin all whole of government success. But by themselves they are not enough. Sometimes special organisational arrangements or processes are necessary to deliver whole of government outcomes efficiently and effectively. Please see Good Practice Guide — Creating a Culture for Success for advice about getting cultural factors right.
The types of tasks you might be involved with will determine the sort of structures best suited to your task.
Think about what kind of cross-agency coordination is needed to help to achieve your goals:
- Do you need to develop a single and agreed product? Is an end date important? Is it a single issue matter? An interdepartmental committee would meet this purpose.
- Do you need to achieve a difficult and complex outcome in a short to medium timeframe? Do you need the cooperation of other agencies to achieve this? Do you need a creative solution? A taskforce would be a good structure. If the outcome is longer-term then a joint team might be more appropriate.
- Are you developing a new service? Does another agency have a similar service, perhaps with an overlapping client base? Could that other agency deliver your service more cheaply or more conveniently for your clients? If so, an agency arrangement might be the best option.
- Are you dealing with a contentious and complex issue involving a range of stakeholders with a range of views? Is the symbolism of a new and separate agency important? If so, a frontier agency might be the best option.
Possible structures for the type of work
Match the type of task in step one, to the structural options in step two. Then check the box to see how well suited the structure is to the task.
| Step One | What are the characteristics of your task? | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Policy development | Program design and review | Program management and service delivery | Cross-jurisdictional and cross-sector | Crisis management | |
| Step Two | Decide on the structure that best suits your task | ||||
| Inter-departmental committees | H | M | L | M | H-M |
| Taskforces | H | H | H | H-M | M-L |
| Joint teams | H-M | H-M | M | M-L | L |
| Agency arrangements | L | L | H | M-L | L |
| Frontier agencies | H | H | H | L | L |
| L = Low; M = Medium; H = High | |||||
When it comes to crisis management, experience in Australia has shown that ‘hub and spokes’ coordination works very well. This is essentially a lead agency structure, with one department coordinating the efforts of several departments. Sometimes there is a need for more than one set of ‘hub and spokes’—in the case of the Bali bombing, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was the ‘hub’ for international efforts, and the Department of Family and Community Services was the ‘hub’ for the domestic response. See Good Practice Guide No. 7 for more on crisis management
