IPAA SA Member and Strategic Advisory Committee Member Donna Robb, has made exceptional contributions to leading a positive change for Aboriginal people in the workplace. Donna was recently the joint winner of the Shirley Peisley Award in recognition of her achievements and commitment to several key projects and innovations which included increasing the Aboriginal employment rate in the Department of Premier and Cabinet from 1.4% to 4.2% in 4 months!

She is now working in the Office of the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment helping, to create leadership opportunities and pathways for Aboriginal people in the public sector through the Aboriginal Frontline Leadership Program. Congratulations Donna.

IPAA SA is exciting to be working with Insight Hack and exciting innovation which enables public servants from across Australia to connect over a six-week period and bring their collective policy and implementation experience to bear on some of the most complex and challenging policy issues facing Australia.

Discussion has now opened on three policy challenges — Government in the Digital Age; The Future of Work in Australia: Preparing Australia’s Workforce; and Mental Health: Towards Zero Suicides.

Entry to the challenge is free for South Australian Public Sector employees under the Innovation Lab’s Mindhive membership. For more information on the 2019 Insight Hack visit Mindhive.org/insight-hack.

At our Annual General Meeting we thanked Mr Charles Moore as he stepped down as IPAA SA Vice President. Mr Moore has been an exceptional contributor to the success of IPAA SA and an invaluable addition to our Council and committee’s since 2017. Again, we would like to extend our sincere thanks on behalf of our Divisional Council and Professional Members.

This year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM ) was also a great chance to connect and share everything IPAA SA got up to over the 2018/2019 financial year. There was mixed feelings as we farewelled two retiring council members, Charles Moore and Sarah Melin, thanking them for their exceptional contributions, and proudly welcomed two new members to our Divisional Council, Rick Persse, Department for Education, South Australia, and Cathy Taylor, Department for Child Protection SA. We look forward to the insight and experience they will bring to IPAA SA. Cathy Taylor was also recognised at the AGM as an IPAA Fellow, the highest accolade of the institute, in recognition of her exceptional contributions to the best practice of public administration.

We were excited to partner with the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure to recognise some outstanding contributions from up and coming young leaders.

Congratulations to the recipients of this year’s DPTI Youth Excellence Awards, whose outstanding achievement was recognised yesterday.

The Winners of this year’s awards were as follows;

Emerging Leader of the Year – Scott Wagenfeller
Excellence – Jasmine Flavell
Innovation -Nicklas Abel
Customer Service – Minjie Lee
Safety – Tyrone Hughes
Culture – Maria Zafar

Mr Jeremy Conway shared with us in this On the Couch session, his passion and pride for the role he has stepped into as Chief Executive of Infrastructure SA and leading South Australia’s first 20 Year Infrastructure Plan. Mr Conway highlighted some of the challenges and future opportunities he sees for the state and its infrastructure.

On behalf of IPAA SA and PwC we would like to thank Mr Jeremy Conway for his valuable time as well as Mark Thomson, Partner, PwC for his role as interviewer.

At this year’s IPAA National Conference Dr Christopher Pepin-Neff from The University of Sydney and Ms Kristin Caporale from Assumption College, Worcestor Massachusetts, were announced as the winners of the 2019 Sam Richardson Award for the most influential paper published in ‘The Australian Journal of Public Administration’.

Dr Pepin-Neff and Ms Caporale won the award for their paper ‘Funny Evidence: Female Comics are the New Policy Entrepreneurs’, arguing that female comics can serve as policy entrepreneurs in public administration by using their identity to locate themselves as relevant actors, attaching solutions to problems, biasing political outcomes, benefiting from their engagement, and introducing narratives that change the emotional habitus of an audience and influence the broader public.

Professor Peter Shergold AC, the outgoing IPAA National President, announced the Sam Richardson Award winners at a gala dinner preceding the 2019 IPAA National Conference in Darwin last night.

“The article by Christopher and Kristin challenges the way we think about the theory of policy entrepreneurship — the impact of individual actors on the policy process — by looking at it through the lens of some of the world’s best female comics, from the cartoonist, author and playwright Alison Bechdel, to Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy and many others,” said Professor Shergold.

The prestigious public administration award honours the contribution of administrator, academic and lawyer, Professor Sam S. Richardson (1919-2004) to public administration study and practice in Australia.

Dr Pepin-Neff and Ms Caporale were unable to attend the dinner due to research commitments in the USA but it is hoped that they will be able to receive their awards in person at a future IPAA event.

Read Dr Pepin-Neff and Ms Caporale’s paper, Funny Evidence: Female Comics are the New Policy Entrepreneurs.