Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
Building Co-Design Capability for Culturally Sensitive Water Policy
We believe genuine policy outcomes emerge when First Nations communities are true partners in the design process, not just consulted stakeholders.
Outcomes
- Comprehensive toolkit with immediate practical application
- Cultural shift towards shared decision-making in water policy
- Foundation for ongoing organisational transformation
- 100% of participants gained culturally sensitive co-design capability
- Enhanced confidence in uncertain conversations and collaborative processes
Services
- Co-design
Sectors
Moving Beyond Traditional Consultation
The First Nations Water Branch at DCCEEW develops policies affecting Murray-Darling Basin water governance and national water systems. These policies directly impact First Nations communities' cultural connections to Country and water systems. The branch recognised that meaningful policy outcomes required moving beyond consultation to genuine partnership. However, staff lacked the confidence and practical skills to navigate uncertain conversations, share decision-making power, and create authentic collaboration spaces.
We need a codesign process more closely aligned with our cultural understanding.
Building Capability Through Experiential Learning
We designed and delivered comprehensive co-design training that built both mindset and capability for 28 staff members. Our approach moved beyond generic workshops to address the specific challenges of government-First Nations engagement in water policy contexts. We created experiential learning that mirrored real policy challenges, focussing heavily on power dynamics, cultural sensitivity, and systems thinking. Staff practised framing complex water governance problems, understanding community needs through genuine inquiry, and applying the complete co-design cycle from problem definition through implementation and evaluation. We developed a customised Co-Design Project Workbook with DCCEEW branding, providing step-by-step guidance, templates, and frameworks for immediate application in ongoing policy work.
Agreement Across All Learning Objectives
The results exceeded expectations. Post-workshop evaluation showed 100% agreement across all learning objectives, with every participant reporting stronger understanding of culturally sensitive co-design and increased confidence in collaborative processes. Staff felt significantly more comfortable with uncertainty, essential for authentic First Nations engagement. The training sparked recognition of opportunities to develop more culturally aligned approaches, with participants requesting ongoing support and describing the session as "fantastic" and "thought-provoking."
This session was fantastic! It gave me a lot to think about and plan for. The only thing I would suggest is more examples e.g. of different co-design scenarios. The video at the end was great, but there wasn't much of an explanation as to how the Biz Ability program (if I'm remembering correctly) was a result of co-design. More on how they achieved that, what sort of workshops they ran etc, would be great, just to have some real-world scenarios of where this has been successful. Otherwise, excellent! Thank you so much.
