Michael Di Francesco is Associate Professor in Policy and Governance, specialising in public administration. He is Director of Education in the Crawford School and Academic Director of the Crawford School Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Program.

Michael was previously Associate Professor in Public Sector Management and Director of the Case Program (the John L. Alford Case Library) through a joint named appointment at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Michael has held academic appointments at the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, and Victoria University of Wellington.

Michael has research interests in Australian public administration, including public budgeting, public financial management, rule frameworks in public organizations, and public management policy. His research has been published in Public Management Review, Public Budgeting & Finance, Financial Accountability & Management, International Journal of Public Sector Management, and the Australian Journal of Public Administration. He has twice been a recipient of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) Sam Richardson Award for the most influential or important article published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration. His most recent book (with Professor John Alford)  is Balancing Control and Flexibility in Public Budgeting: A New Role for Rule Variability (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 

Michael has significant senior public sector experience. In 2019 he served as Assistant Secretary, Public Sector Reform in the Australian Department of Finance, and between 2003 and 2010 he was Principal Advisor in Financial Management Policy at NSW Treasury, where he led strategic budget, performance management and corporate governance reform across the NSW general government sector. He has held many technical assistance appointments with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (advising finance and planning ministries in Poland, Brazil, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Vietnam), the World Bank (researching multiyear budget frameworks and advising finance ministries in Brazil, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) (advising on provincial multiyear budget frameworks in the People’s Republic of China). Michael has advised on performance-based budget reform for the Australian Department of Finance and NSW Treasury, and in 2015 was appointed by the National Treasury of South Africa to an international panel of experts to evaluate its expenditure review program.

Michael is an Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of Public Administration (AJPA). He was an Editorial Board member of the AJPA for over a decade, and has twice served as a Councillor with the NSW Division of IPAA.