From policy papers to post-its: Provision of advice within the public sector.

The Susan McKinnon Foundation (SMF) are undertaking a research project to understand how public servants provide advice, and what impacts, if any, Freedom of Information/Right to Information laws and similar transparency mechanisms have on how the public service works. The aim of this survey is to understand what, if any, improvements could help the public service work more efficiently and support the provision of frank and fearless advice whilst protecting the rights of the public to access information – not to identify specific examples of good or bad practice.

This survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete.

SMF is a non-partisan, independent not-for-profit with the aim of strengthening Australia’s democracy and supporting practical improvements to help Australia achieve a more fit-for-purpose political, policy and service delivery system. To learn more about SMF, you can visit their website here: https://www.susanmckinnon.org.au/

This survey is both anonymous and confidential, in that the survey does not ask for your name or any personally identifiable information, the survey link is not personalized and cannot be tracked back to any email or computer used, nor will any individual responses be shared with anyone outside the project team. All data is stored securely within SMF and will not be provided to external organisations, and all public reporting and analysis of this survey will only reference aggregate results so that individual teams or people cannot be singled out.

Given the sensitive nature of this survey we appreciate you taking the time to provide us with honest answers based on your experience, even if you think you do not have anything substantial to add, however if you do not wish to answer any question you can skip it.