Advocacy And Innovation In Interagency Management: The Case Of Centrelink

Two basic principles of public organization have been the strength of the functional principle as the basis for most central government organization and the direct control of the ministerial department over delivery of big-budget social services. Both were challenged in the 1990s as the combined impact of new public management and customer service suggested new ways of handling these questions. One result was a new type of agency that combined the functional separation of delivery and purchaser-provider from new public management, but also horizontal integration of delivery. This creative design seemed to offer solutions to specific problems, but it also produced tensions with others arising from governance issues and the complexities entailed in the connections between specialization and coordination.