Dr Cathy Fussell is an Australian Government public servant and academic. As a public servant, Cathy has over 20 years’ experience in policy and program delivery, and data analytics strategy and capability development. Her work currently focuses on using data for outcomes-driven policy adaption. She is exploring what that looks like in practice and the tools required.
As an academic, Dr Fussell seeks to address the bias towards theorising power in its negative exercise, i.e. domination, neglecting the positive. And the resulting widespread conflation of power with domination. This does not help public servants in the exercise of their power. Yet, by definition, power is the capacity to achieve outcomes. And the whole point of democratic government is deliver shared outcomes that individuals cannot achieve alone. Cathy’s academic work, therefore, focuses on rethinking power in light of complex systems theory, and the system dynamics of ethical and effective governing.
Cathy is a visiting fellow at ANU’s School of Cybernetics and a Sir Roland Wilson Foundation alumni and board member. She is an active champion of APS-academic partnerships.
