Putting Citizens First: Engagement in Policy and Service Delivery for the 21st Century

During the late 2000s the theme of citizen-oriented government steadily rose to the top of the public management agenda (OECD 2009). Governments at all levels have declared their interest in finding better ways to respond to and serve citizens and communities through better-designed programs and consultative processes. The theme of the Australia and New Zealand School of Governments (ANZSOG) 2011 annual conference in Sydney, Putting Citizens First was designed to explore these ideas. Early in the planning process, the program committee recognised that the phrase citizen-oriented government or governance can mean different things to different people, and even committed practitioners and scholars can talk past each other when discussing how to better design, serve and work with citizens. This collection of essays, based on the presentations made at the conference, seeks to capture many of these insights.