- Contents
- Preamble and Acknowledgements
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Methodology
- Profile of the Emerging Field of Inquiry into Public Sector Innovation
- Framing the Major Issues
- Key Findings
- Examples of Public Service Innovation
- Overall Conclusions
- Bibliography
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- Supplement to Innovation in the Public Sector > Profile of the Emerging Field
Profile of the Emerging Field of Inquiry into Public Sector Innovation
The academic literature is still in a formative state. For instance, just over half (51.5%) of the 167 academic journal articles examining public sector innovation tracked by the extensive Thomson-Reuters database publications in the period 1971–2008 were published in the three years: 2006–2008 (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). Nearly 70% of the cumulative total number of articles identified over this timeframe were published since 2003.
As is clear in Figure 2, this area of academic literature started to expand more rapidly from 2003 onwards, possibly as a response to practitioner-driven work published in the preceding few years (notably by the UK government). However, it is worth noting that there is no clear citation pattern linking the growth in academic publications to the UK government-produced documents that stand out in highlighting the importance of public sector innovation — notably (Mulgan and Albury 2003). The most plausible explanation for this is that the practice-led moves (notably by the UK government) from the mid 1990s onwards stimulated academic inquiry which started to get reflected in academic publications after the usual time-lags associated with securing research funding and publishing (a process that can take around five years before the publications finally emerge).[1]
It is also worth noting that 2009 is a timely point in the growth of this new area of literature to establish a comprehensive bibliographic database (as has been carried out for this ANAO project) in order to track and monitor how understanding of public sector innovation evolves.
It is clear that a new field of inquiry has emerged and it would therefore be useful to practitioners in the public sector (and civil society) to establish a comprehensive bibliographic database able to track the growing number of publications and to identify the most highly cited and influential work.
Figure 1: The growth in the number of academic articles examining public sector innovation issues, 1971 to 2008
Source: Thomson-Reuters Web-of-Science Database (accessed on 13 March 2009).
Technical notes: The search terms used comprised various combinations of the following keywords linked to ‘innovation’ and: public policy; government; public management; public procurement; public administration; public sector; public service. This is not an exhaustive count, simply one indication of the growth of this new field of inquiry.
Figure 2: Cumulative output of academic articles examining public sector innovation issues, 1971 to 2007 (%)
Source: Thomson-Reuters Web-of-Science Database (accessed on 13 March 2009).
The data in Figure 3 places the preceding profile of academic articles relating to public sector innovation into context by detailing historical changes in the number of academic publications with either ‘innovation’ or ‘productivity’ in the title. This allows us to identify the more general levels of interest in innovation. In each case a distinction is drawn between publications in all areas and in the social sciences in particular.
It is clear that the rate of output of publications with a more general emphasis on ‘innovation’ has increased rapidly since 2003 — particularly across all areas of research (social and natural sciences). In other words, the growth pattern for studies of public sector innovation is similar to that for more general work on innovation. The inclusion of publications counts for work relating to ‘productivity’ allows the relative emphasis on these two issues to be judged.
Figure 3: Profile of publications with ‘innovation’ versus ‘productivity’ in the title
Source: Thomson-Reuters Web-of-Science Database (accessed on 13 March 2009).
The rapidly developing nature of this area of inquiry means that some well established ‘quality assurance’ mechanisms have yet to be applied, namely systematic and peer-reviewed assessments of evidence, comparative peer-reviewed analysis of different case studies etc. Consequently, given the formative stage of this literature it is necessary to draw conclusions on the basis of what tend to be anecdotal and unsystematic observations that fall in the lower levels of the ‘hierarchy of evidence’ proposed following a recent Australian Treasury-supported examination of the robustness of evidence used in policy-making (see Leigh 2009).
Broadly speaking, Leigh’s hierarchy of evidence seeks to foster a greater use of statistically robust evidence (randomised trials of efficiency and effectiveness etc) as compared to more ad hoc and less reliable means of collecting the evidence used to propose new approaches in the public sector. The rationale for making more explicit use of a ‘hierarchy of evidence’ in a public policy context is pertinent to public sector innovation. The lower the use of potentially unreliable (not scientifically tested or testable) assertions — the lower the risk of proposing and implementing new policies and service delivery models that are either ineffective or turn out to be damaging (via unforeseen and/or unintended consequences etc). Indeed, it is for this reason that the Review of the National Innovation System noted the relevance of randomised trials to fostering effective public sector innovation.
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