All Australian governments are working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their communities, organisations and businesses to implement the National Agreement on Closing the Gap at the national, state, territory, and local levels.
Government has committed to building and strengthening structures that empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to share decision-making authority with governments to accelerate policy and place-based progress against Closing the Gap.
This means ensuring that when governments undertake changes to policy and programs that impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, they engage fully, transparently and as genuine partners.
Co-design must be done in a way where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:
- have a leadership role in the design and conduct of engagements
- know the purpose and fully understand what is being proposed
- know what feedback is provided and how governments take this into account when making decisions
- are able to assess whether the engagements have been fair, transparent and open.
The Government of South Australia has committed to a fundamentally new way of developing and implementing policies and programs that impact on the lives of Aboriginal peoples, in partnership with Aboriginal peoples.
State governments have agreed, under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, the definition and implementation of co-design must be informed by the following foundational principles of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
- self-determination
- participation in decision-making
- free prior and informed consent and good faith
- respect for and protection of culture
- equality and non-discrimination.
Co-design definition for the South Australian public sector
Co-design is a participatory and decision-making tool for problem solving where those with technical expertise and lived experience come together on equal ground to design specific solutions.
Participants have equal standing to the South Australian Government at every stage of decision making – from initial issue identification to developing and delivering solutions, which includes monitoring, evaluating and improvements as needed.
Co-design with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (PDF, 3.3 MB)
Co-design principles and conditions
The associated principles and conditions below further illustrate how co-design operates.
Co-design principle
Self-determination is both the goal and the process undertaken to ensure people are able to make decisions about matters that affect their lives.
Co-design conditions
Free, prior and informed consent is required before any decisions are made or implemented.
Meaningful recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants are best placed to determine solutions that affect their communities and must be valued as such.
Co-design principle
Achieving change and improving outcomes is the purpose of co-design. The outcomes are more important than the outputs.
Co-design conditions
Progress towards outcomes should be routinely measured and fully transparent.
Co-design principle
Representatives from critical stakeholder groups are included in the co-design project from framing the issue to developing and testing solutions and making decisions. It utilises feedback, advice and decisions from people with lived experience, and the knowledge, experience and skills of experts in the field.
Co-design conditions
Strategies are used to address unconscious bias in identifying who the critical stakeholders are.
Identification of stakeholders is informed by all participants.
Co-design principle
Stakeholder groups must be supported to participate equally in co-design – recognising that the imbalance of power and resourcing means that government stakeholders have a significant advantage over other participants, particularly Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) and other community participants.
Co-design conditions
Strategies must be used to reduce and prevent inequality, which includes supporting ACCOs to participate equitably in co-design.
Co-design principle
All participants are seen as experts and their knowledge, lived experience and time is valued and has equal standing. Active participation is essential. Co-design requires everyone to negotiate personal and practical understandings at the expense of differences.
Co-design conditions
Participants require a transparent and timely response to their contributions that allows them to understand how their views have been considered and implemented.
Co-design principle
Continuous striving for cultural competency is reflected in the process. Approaches must consider people with intersecting vulnerabilities and incorporate flexible, familiar and engaging practices, to ensure they feel comfortable and welcome to lead and participate in the process.
Co-design conditions
The presence of cultural safety is to be guided and defined by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are participants in the co-design process.
The cultural authority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants is recognised and respected.
It is the individuals who determine whether their culture or identity is being respected, or if they are being subjected to discrimination, bias, or inequitable power imbalances.
Co-design principle
Ideas and solutions are tested and evaluated with all participants.
The goal of co-design is to create a safe space to understand all perspective and collectively shape solutions. The co-design process should be full of feedback loops, learning, iteration, and trial and error.
Co-design conditions
Changes and adaptations are a natural part of the process, trialling possibilities and insights as they emerge, taking risks and allowing for failure.
Co-design principle
Participants are required to have a leadership role in the design and conduct of engagements that reflects their standing as partners whose views are given equal weight to government. Participants must have an active and equal role in decision making and understand their impact, role and responsibilities.
Co-design conditions
The purpose, rationale and impact of the engagement and decision making is to be transparent and clearly communicated to participants.
Project Management is required to support the co-design process and provide a foundation for all participants to have clarity on the authorising environment, responsibilities and any limitations within the process.
Self-determination is both the goal and the process.
Co-design vs formal partnership
Agencies and critical stakeholders, who will be involved in shared decision making, need to consider whether co-design is appropriate in a specific context, or whether a formal partnership arrangement is instead required to meet the needs of communities and to fulfill the obligations of the National Agreement.
Guidance for the purpose of strong partnership elements under the National Agreement clarifies that ‘co-design is not considered a partnership arrangement, but a partnership can do co-design.’
Scope of co-design
Co-design is the preferred method of identifying and delivering the outcomes sought by communities in relation to a project, program or policy that impacts Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Co-design would be undertaken:
- where an opportunity is identified under an existing arrangement that can be built upon, expanded or current shared decision-making arrangements can be strengthened (Clause 34)
- where current services are not meeting objectives or achieving desired outcomes
- a new policy, budget allocation, or program is to be developed and implemented
- where communities, organisations or government agencies identify a need to support self-determination for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples
- the issue or problem to be addressed does not have an obvious service delivery solution
- the issue to be addressed is one that has been resistant to previous efforts, and will require whole-of-government or whole-of-community responses.
The Partnership Agreement is a tool that can be used to support the co-design process and define ways of working.
Scope exclusions
There will be circumstances when a co-design approach will be excluded. These circumstances are limited to the following:
- when a decision-making process is defined in legislation, unless outlined as a co-design process, the decision will be required to be undertaken as legislated
- when decisions are about funding as they are the responsibility of government, however any processes to inform funding decisions should be co-designed. Shared decision-making in the context of funding decisions is demonstrated ‘where relevant funding for programs and services align with jointly agreed community priorities’ (clause 32(c)(vi) of the National Agreement)
- Matters within the remit of Ministerial discretion.
Co-design public sector event
The Department of the Premier and Cabinet partnered with IPAA South Australia to present ‘Co-design: Delivering better outcomes for South Australia’ for public sector employees on 11 April 2025 at the Adelaide Convention Centre.
View the event recordings and find out more about Co-design: Delivering better outcomes for South Australia.