Developing Government Policy Capability

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CHAPTER

Reconceptualizing Project Management for Policy Work

Progressive reforms of public sector management in Australia in the first ten years of the new millennium recognized the complex nature of policy and emphasized the need to develop policy capability in the APS. The adoption and use of project management was viewed as a necessary skill set for that capability. However, given the limitations of traditional project management practice when applied to policy work, we argue for the need to reconceptualize project management by adopting a knowledge-based view to supplement the current technical orientation. In this chapter, we explore how project management can be expanded to incorporate a knowledge-based view to address the wicked problem ...