A growing bandwagon of commentators declare our collective existence is subject to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Welcome to the 'VUCA world'. Since populations typically turn to governments for support when crises strike, there is merit in policy scholars paying close attention to the 'VUCA world' narrative. This article assesses the implications of the VUCA narrative for policy professionals charged with conducting policy coordination and development. If volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are becoming more commonplace, what aspects of coordination and development work should change? We indicate how policy professionals might harness new technologies and integrate them with long-term planning tools to help governments anticipate and reduce the consequences of crisis events. A lot of the technology now at our fingertips can be usefully deployed to assist with improved policy coordination and development to rapidly and effectively respond to VUCA-like challenges. Further, more 'stewardship' capability in and around government must be built to enable exploration of future scenarios so societies can stand ready to address anticipated eventualities. We conclude that the VUCA narrative can promote salutary improvements in the practice of policy coordination and development.

Addressing sustainability policy challenges requires tools that can navigate complexity for better policy processes and outcomes. Attention on Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and expectations for their use by governments have dramatically increased over the past decade. We conducted a narrative review of academic and grey literature to investigate how AI tools are being used and adapted for policy and public sector decision-making. We found that academics, governments, and consultants expressed positive expectations about AI, arguing that AI could or should be used to address a wide range of policy challenges. However, there is much less evidence of how public decision makers are actually using AI tools or detailed insight into the outcomes of use. From our findings we draw four lessons for translating the promise of AI into practice: 1) Document and evaluate AI's application to sustainability policy problems in the real-world; 2) Focus on existing and mature AI technologies, not speculative promises or external pressures; 3) Start with the problem to be solved, not the technology to be applied; and 4) Anticipate and adapt to the complexity of sustainability policy problems.

This playbook, written by researchers at Monash University, is a practical guide for academic AI experts to help them apply artificial intelligence (AI) tools and techniques to complex challenges in policy and sustainability. It includes a five step guide: (1) Finding and working with partners (2) Understanding the problem (3) Assessing fit and selecting an AI approach (4) Design and validation of AI tool(s) (5) Embedding the AI tool in practice. It also provides a simple introduction to policy, sustainability & sustainable development, and the current evidence on the promise & reality of applying AI to these challenges. As part of the attached OSF project, templates are provided to plan and conduct partner workshops and propose collaborative pilot projects.

Royal commissions are established at the Commonwealth and state levels in Australia to investigate matters of significant public concern. These distinctive entities are highly respected both by government and the community. They are typically expected to produce reports that will have significant impact. Although a large number are created primarily to determine why specific events happened and where accountabilities lie, many are expected to generate findings and recommendations that will lead to policy change. We review common strategies that actors in and around government deploy with the purpose of shaping public policy. This leads to an exploration of the influence strategies deployed by three Australian royal commissions that achieved high levels of policy impact. Lessons are drawn for how future royal commissions might create policy legacies that deliver high public value.

The spread of Covid-19 and the variety of government responses opens space for policy learning. Traditional policy analysis tools would lead us to explain policy variation using population size, ease of closing jurisdictional borders, governance arrangements, available resources, and system capacity. Following the approach of the Narrative Policy Framework, we suggest narrative has played a key role in the relative effectiveness of responses to Covid-19. We illustrate the dynamics at play using evidence from the state level in the United States, where there has been considerable variation in policy actions and rates of infection and death. After reviewing the national context, we explain our selection of cases. We note differences in state-level policy narratives and how they influenced policy development and implementation. The findings provide compelling reason for policy designers everywhere to routinely integrate narrative development and control into their advising practices.

Over the past few decades the world has seen a large increase in the number of people seeking asylum. The reactions from Western nations have been varied and the question of responsibility is of social and political significance. When Murdoch Stephens began his campaign in 2013, New Zealand had not increased its refugee quota in 30 years, and amidst this global refugee crisis, their intake figures were poor by international comparison. In Doing Our Bit – The Campaign to Double the Refugee Quota, Murdoch Stephens reviews his campaign, and issues the challenge that New Zealand is not just a passive spectator in the refugee crisis.