Conceptualizing Interagency Coordination as Metagovernance: Complexity, Dynamism, and Learning in Australian and British Statistical Administration

ABSTRACT

Top-down methods of interagency coordination are inadequate in contemporary public administration, where multiple departments and agencies interact across loosely coupled networks to solve complex problems. The concept of metagovernance suggests governments can employ combinations of coordination instruments to steer dispersed actors toward common goals. This article asks how officials in Australian and British statistical administration addressed problems with traditional coordination methods. Interviews with senior official statisticians show a transition from traditional interagency coordination to metagovernance, driven by failures and learning. Metagovernance captures how interagency coordination is increasingly practiced, though existing theories should give more attention to learning and adaptation.

KEYWORDS:

• Official statistics
• coordination
• metagovernance
• learning

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Michelle Brady, Dennis Grube, Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh, Thomas Schillemans and Patrick Weller for their comments.

Notes

¹ Australian Bureau of Statistics Act (Commonwealth) 1975.

² These included the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS, created 1980), the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW, created 1987), and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES, created 2010).

³ These included the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) longitudinal dataset, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), and The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC).

⁴ This is not to be confused with the more recent initiative of the same name in New Zealand.

⁵ In 2013, we requested the minutes from this meeting, but the ABS was unable to locate them.

⁶ Statistics and Registration Act (United Kingdom) 2007, s. 16.

⁷ Ibid, s. 10.