Public Servants in the Wild: An Introduction

Abstract

This section looks at the work that public servants do beyond central government focusing on people working to manage regional and local governments, and also those working as street-level bureaucrats at the frontline of public service. Co-production is an important theme in many of the chapters, highlighting the impetus to work differently with communities, and to shift power away from formal bureaucracies. The section highlights some of the distinctive challenges facing frontline workers, who seek to work in different ways with communities, but must also work with existing power structures established by peers and managers. There are also distinctive challenges relating to measures of success within local government and how public servants work with performance indicators and outcome measures to demonstrate success in the complex policy domains that operate in localities. The political aspect of local public service is also considered, recognizing the distinctive challenges facing elected officials in a context of resource constraint.