Case Study on Centrelink: Why Did Reforms Occur?

The New Public Management signifies is a shift away from the old public administration or the traditional model of government representing colossal bureaucracies, which have been professionally driven and policy-focused to achieve core public service outcomes, by departments supervising decentralised organisations in and outside of the public service (Aulich, Halligan, & Nutley, 2001). This shift of administration to management has led to the emergence of the new public management and ideas behind it (Ocampo, 2003). The principles emanating from this shift include; a change from input controls and rules to quantifiable output measures or performance targets; the separation of policy-making from service delivery mechanism; the separation of large bureaucratic structures into smaller units or specific purpose agencies; the contractual obligations and relationships between the decentralised service providers and central service purchasers; the preference for private ownership in terms of contracting out and contesting in the public service provision; the search for greater efficiency in the use of public funds such as in audit planning, competition, efficiency savings and publication of performance information; and most importantly, the new public management was involved in the human resource management policies such as contract systems and personnel matters with organisational-wide areas such as strategic and business planning, flatter organisational structures, greater customer approach, internal trading arrangements, and revised corporate governance and planning systems (Aulich et al., 2001).

It is important to highlight the principles of entrepreneurial governments for this purpose and relate it to the case study (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). The principles lays out the common threads in good business-oriented governments and these include; promoting competition between service providers; empowering citizens by promoting control in the community