Making the leap: a practical guide to inter-agency collaboration

Government and community-sector agencies have an equal stake in producing better social services. There is new interest in effective collaboration and pooling of complementary expertise.

In this report, the authors aim to fill a gap in the literature on collaboration by sharing practical insights drawn from interviews with public and community sector managers with recent first-hand experience of inter-agency and cross-sectoral collaboration. It is hoped that the tips contained here will offer concrete guidance for managers who want to ‘make the leap’ from cooperation to genuine collaboration with like-minded agencies.

This practical guide is part of a broader research project examining collaborative forms of commissioning, funded by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) and undertaken by the Brotherhood of St. Laurence.