Uncertainty has played a huge part in our lives for the past two years. While we have all had to adapt to a new and constantly changing ‘normal’, the COVID-19 global pandemic has presented extraordinary and unforeseen challenges for policy practitioners to navigate.

Andrew Morgan is a Sir Roland Wilson PhD scholar from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. He has been examining some of Australia’s policy responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic as part of his PhD research. Andrew aims to use the learnings from policy during the height of the pandemic to understand how best to support policy analysis and delivery of outcomes during uncertainty.

Andrew is particularly interested in thin markets that support essential services as they contain higher levels of uncertainty. Thin markets exist when there are too few suppliers, consumers or transactions – resulting in points of weakness that reduce the effectiveness of routine market operations.

“Thin markets present a unique challenge because they have low levels of reliability and are difficult to predict,” Andrew explained.

“Developing policy to enable thin markets to produce essential outcomes is particularly challenging. Once COVID-19 hit, we faced unprecedented levels of uncertainty and thin points of failure across multiple markets. Many of the services the nation relies on became thin and practitioners had to think differently about how to steer policy investment. They were much more reliant on ground-level intelligence to formulate policy – from arts investment, to aviation to movement of freight and regional development.”

As part of his research, Andrew has been looking at how we can use network intelligence and anticipatory governance to construct policy in routine environments.

“The pressure of the pandemic and the surrounding uncertainty set up an environment focused on critical outcomes without the constraints of routine beliefs and practices. Policy practitioners were much more likely to seek advice immediately from the people on the ground and use this to steer policy implementation. The challenge now is how we can adapt this into routine policy management. 

Andrew has conducted interviews with policy practitioners across the Australian Public Service. His research suggests that practitioners are often constrained by institutional practices and beliefs.

“What was achieved during the early phases of the pandemic was significant and we now have an opportunity to use these lessons to tackle other big policy challenges.”

Andrew’s research is titled ‘Delivering outcomes through uncertainty: crafting policy in thin markets’. In 2021, he was jointed awarded the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation’s Joan Uhr prize for his commitment to strengthening the links between public policy research and practice. You can read more about Andrew and his research on the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation website.

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