Case study: The Engagement & Partnership Team, Department of Sustainability & Environment, Victoria, Australia

The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) is Victoria’s lead Government agency for sustainable management of water resources, climate change, bushfires, public land, forests and ecosystems. It employs 2,700 staff in 90 different locations across the state.

Within the DSE, the Engagement and Partnership Team (EPT) assists staff to plan and implement engagement activities with internal and external communities. The EPT emerged from the service delivery arm of the organisation in 2003. It was born from the recognition that engagement is a fundamental part of the organisation’s business. If engagement is done well, the organisation’s outcomes, and reputation in the broader community, are enhanced.

The EPT’s work got off the ground due to the commitment of a handful of staff who believed that citizens should have a say in matters that affect them. This group would not have been successful, however, without the support of a regional director who continues to champion this area of work.

During its first three years, the team focused on building engagement capacity within the organisation. This involved:

• producing an engagement planning workbook (recently updated and released as an Effective Engagement Kit)
• running training courses
• initiating communities of practice
• hosting visiting experts
• running a series of lunch box seminars
• coaching staff to plan and implement engagement processes
• running a small, action learning project to learn more about evaluating engagement processes.

The team operates with nine or ten staff (seven or eight full-time equivalents). Given this limited resource, an initial decision was made to “work with the willing”. By supporting people who already had an interest in community engagement, existing needs were able to be met, and the value of engagement was able to be showcased. This encouraged others to give it a go.

Though successful at first, much of the work was ad hoc, dependent on emergent priorities, and on last minute requests from managers. Over time the EPT found they needed more organisational legitimacy, in order to build on these achievements and gain access to other parts of the organisation.

In addition, only some members of the team were managed directly through the project. This matrix management structure was established to gain support and funds from directors. However, this arrangement led to differences in alignment of purpose over time and to resources being directed to activities that did not deliver on the project’s goals.

After struggling with these issues for some time, a new champion helped provide some resolution. A newly-appointed executive director of one of the policy divisions took responsibility for the project (including funding), and established a project control board, which she chairs. Membership of the board includes two policy directors, and the regional director (who was the original and ongoing champion for the project).

This project control board has helped establish priorities for the project team and support the development of a new service delivery model. This model describes how the EPT can work with managers when preparing annual business plans, in order to identify projects and policy processes that could benefit from EPT coaching. 

More people are now championing the EPT because the team has been able to demonstrate it achievements. Much of the initial recognition has come from outside DSE. The engagement training course, for example, is in high demand and attracts interest from around Australia. Consequently, the team has developed and run “train-the-trainer” courses so other organisations can provide their own training.

The workbook was the recipient of the Office of Public Employment “Good Ideas for Managing People” award in 2004 and the workbook/kit has been accessed widely.

EPT members have also been actively involved in establishing a whole of Victorian government network that involves eleven agencies with an interest in community engagement as it relates to policy and reform initiatives, community outcomes, capacity building, public sector leadership and effective participation.

Like most organisations, DSE experiences regular change and reorganisation. Recent changes have been more significant than most, and the EPT finds itself needing to rethink its modus operandi. Rather than seeing this as a threat, the team recognises the opportunities this brings. Breaking down the old structures for example, is likely to see the break down of the matrix management arrangements.

An evaluation of EPT’s first three years of operation provides clear insights into what has been effective, where they can be of greatest value to DSE, and how the team can continue to evolve its work. For example, the team is now more focused on coaching project and policy teams directly than on providing training.

The evaluation also provides evidence of the team’s impact, and has further improved the EPT’s credibility in the organisation. A presentation of the report findings to a DSE executive meeting created interest from areas of the organisation that the team had previously not accessed well.

In short, the project was established from the ground up, but would not have succeeded without the support of at least one regional director. The team focused on:

• being as successful as possible
• being able to demonstrate that success
• learning from all situations, especially where things did not work out as expected.

As recognition of the EPT has grown, they clarified the team’s role, and sought more support from senior management, in order to enable access to the broader organisation and continue to evolve.

Case study uploaded November 2008.