Reform of Australian Government Administration
Presentation to APS Staff by Terry Moran, Secretary of Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Canberra, 21 May 2010
Slide 1
Hello and welcome. It is a pleasure to be here today in Canberra for the second in a series of seminars that myself and the Public Service Commissioner are delivering around the country on the reform of Australian Government administration.
As the Chair of the Advisory Group that developed the Blueprint for reform, I am genuinely excited about the opportunities this blueprint presents.
The APS is a patchwork quilt of excellence. We have examples of best practice and excellence across the service and the challenge is to support everyone to achieve this level. In launching this reform agenda we are striving to, as a whole, be the best public service in the world.
Today I will introduce you to the key ideas permeating the blueprint as well as some of the recommendations and how they will be implemented. But I won’t talk for too long in order to leave time to address your questions about the process.
The presentation covers five areas.
Firstly, I’ll talk a little about how the blueprint was developed.
Second, I’ll explain the key objectives of blueprint – what is it seeking to achieve?
Third, an overview of the recommendations
Fourth - Where to next in terms of implementation of the reforms.
And Finally – I want to provide some thoughts on what the reforms mean for you.
Slide 2
At the outset I want to point out that on the 8th of May, the Prime Minister announced that the Government had accepted the Blueprint recommendations in full.
So reform of the APS is now Government policy, and nobody need wait to make a start.
This is a wonderful opportunity for each of us working in the public service.
And it means things will change.
Some changes will come directly from the recommendations. Some changes will only happen if leaders make them a priority. And some changes will rely on each of us being willing to do things differently.
In some respects this might seem like a daunting proposition. But I believe that we have nothing to fear from the blueprint, and everything to gain.
Slide 3
The recommendations of this Blueprint should resonate with every person in this room.
Because the Blueprint reflects the views of real people. Departmental staff & portfolio secretaries; new recruits & retired leaders; businesses & not-for-profits; agencies & individuals.
This was a deliberate approach by the Advisory Group. We did not set out to draft a theoretical treatise. The blueprint is not an exercise in desktop research. It is a set of practical recommendations that address issues identified through a broad consultation process.
The Advisory Group itself contained a mix of representatives from the private sector, universities, and public service departments – all of whom brought unique insights to the process from within and without the service.
Slide 4
So to turn to the consultation process:
We conducted online forums with the public, receiving over 800 posts about how to improve the APS.
And we received over 200 submissions in response to our discussion paper from a cross section of individuals and organisations from the public, private and non-profit sectors.
Departmental secretaries were consulted regularly through the review, and former secretaries and public service commissioners were engaged.
Focus groups were conducted with randomly selected public servants across the country to unearth the problems they face in their day to day working lives. The roundtable with new entrants to the public service to elicit their early impressions was particularly informative.
The Advisory Group also drew on the findings of the State of the Service reports conducted annually by the APSC.
Our conversations with these stakeholders revealed a number of common themes – issues that arose again and again to demand our attention. These included:
- the need to improve the quality of leadership and management in the APS;
- a desire for more standardised terms and conditions;
- a frustration with internal red tape; and
- a belief that we focus too much on our own programs and not enough on the recipients in the community.
The end result is a Blueprint that has been deliberately constructed to meet the concerns of the APS and the broader community. The blueprint is, in effect, a series of balanced judgements about how to deal with the issues highlighted by the consultations.
Now let me turn to my second point today – the overarching objectives of the blueprint, which were drawn from these consultations.
Slide 5
First and foremost, the blueprint promotes the concept of putting people first. All of our work is ultimately for the benefit of the Australian people, and we need to keep this in the front of our minds in our day to day work.
Many of the people we consulted talked about an APS that is focussed on programs instead of people.
The blueprint advocates a citizen centred approach, which places a primacy on outcomes for the community. It also says we should strive for better evaluation and feedback loops to test how well we are achieving this goal.
To meet the needs of a growing and changing population, we need to think creatively about how to engage with Australian citizens to improve services. The expertise of front line staff should also be better harnessed to inform our policies and service design.
Slide 6
One of the objectives of the Blueprint is to improve the capacity of the APS to deliver strategic policy – policy that addresses complex problems facing society.
Coming to grips with complex issues, such as indigenous disadvantage or climate change, is at the heart of good strategic policy across many areas of government.
It requires a finely tuned mix of strong conceptual thinking, and a sophisticated understanding of real world constraints. A good strategic policy leader needs to have both.
Strategic policy advice thinks beyond the next incremental decision and considers how governments may effectively position the nation for the future through their actions today. It takes a holistic perspective across all policy domains, through the analysis of underlying problems and the development of creative solutions.
And importantly, we must always test the results of strategic policy work by imagining the impact on the ground – how citizens, communities, businesses and systems are affected. There is much made of citizen centric delivery – and rightly so – but we should also be focusing on citizen centric policy.
The environment in which policy is developed is also crucial. Innovation must be valued and encouraged. We must challenge the current culture of risk aversion that so many staff described in our consultations.
A first step is recognising the importance of innovation in policy development and advice.
Today I am pleased to announce the launch of the Management Advisory Committee’s report, Empowering Change: Fostering Innovation in the Australian Public Service.
Patricia Kelly from the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science and Research - who led the development of this report - is here with us today. At the end of my remarks I will pass to Patricia to say a few words about the significance of this report.
The report is an important complement to the work of the Blueprint as well as the recent Australian National Audit Office’s Better Practice Guide for Innovation. I am very pleased that the Auditor General has looked at the constraints to innovation in the APS, and produced this guidance for officers.
Patricia will tell us a bit more about the MAC report and its implementation but I wanted to take a moment to remark on the importance of strong leadership to improving innovation and strategic policy.
The Blueprint addresses this at the highest levels by clearly articulating the roles and responsibilities of secretaries.
The relevant recommendation (4.2) seeks to rebalance the amount of time and effort that Secretaries spend on competing priorities. In particular, highlighting that secretaries not only serve their Ministers, but also have a fundamental stewardship role, not only for their department, but for the whole APS.
This means that they are collectively responsible for maintaining the quality of the APS over time, regardless of who is in government and must commit time to this aspect of their work.
Slide 7
Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-08642 / unknown / CC-BY-SA
Just as the Blueprint advocates a focus on the citizen, it also calls for a greater emphasis on the capacity of APS employees.
Indeed greater support for staff is critical to the success of individual reforms as well as the Blueprint as a whole.
One of the objectives of the Blueprint is to position the public service to meet emerging pressures such as the ageing of the population. Recruitment, development and retention will become increasingly important as the APS competes for staff in a tightening labour market.
Over many years, human resource management has been devolved to agencies with very little central oversight. This has led to a situation where terms and conditions vary widely between departments for staff doing similar jobs. This has had implications for mobility within the public service.
An objective of the blueprint is to get the right balance between central oversight and devolved decision making, so that agencies are assisted in planning and managing their workforces within an overall framework.
The Blueprint also seeks to promote the idea of one-APS – a more collegiate approach in which staff feel part of an institution beyond their individual organisation.
And the blueprint aims to address many of the people management issues that staff have raised in consultations, ranging from poor performance management to a lack of investment in learning and development.
Slide 8
The fourth broad objective of the blueprint is to work smarter. One of the hallmarks of a high performing organisation is efficiency and high standards. A desire to do better on this front came through strongly in staff consultations – many people felt that we can and should be working differently to be more efficient and effective.
Take, for example, the delegation of authority. A common theme in our consultations was the erosion of decision making at lower levels, which has created bottlenecks up the line. Many staff at the front line of service delivery also felt disempowered when dealing with customers, because decisions are being made miles away by people far removed.
Red tape was also a common concern. Indeed some secretaries spoke of the onerous Chief Executive Instructions that bind their organisations, and the barriers they faced when trying to make changes, some of which were self imposed by people within their own agencies.
The aim of the Blueprint is to identify areas to improve efficiency and effectiveness, but more importantly, to establish processes that will drive continual improvements over time.
Slide 9
The blueprint sets out principles for working with Ministers.
It explains that Ministers and the APS work in partnership to develop policy and implement government programs and services, with Ministers having the final say.
The APS must be flexible enough to meet the needs of each Minister, within a framework of enduring working principles. The blueprint outlines 13 such principles, but I won’t test your patience and read them all out today. I will highlight just a few.
- Clear roles and responsibilities in the management of the portfolio, recognising the Secretary’s legislative responsibilities;
- Assured regular access to Ministers and
- freedom to give good and bad news. This includes a capacity to plan for and discuss short and long term priorities;
- Adaptability on the part of senior executives to the style of the Minister, in terms of presentation of advice and assistance in meeting the demands of the Minister’s role;
- A shared understanding about the working relationship between the APS and Ministerial staff, consistent with the relevant Code of Conduct; and
- An appreciation that, after due discussion on policy advice, the Minister has the last word and that the decision is accepted and implemented.
I will leave you to read the full set of principles in the blueprint.
Slide 10
I now direct you to the summary of the 28 recommendations found at Appendix 4 in the Blueprint – we have handed this out today as a loose A3 page which you should have found on your chairs. This provides a ready-reckoner for the different areas where changes will be occurring.
The Blueprint reform agenda was designed so that each of the recommendations would reinforce one-another and I’ll touch on sequencing in a moment.
First I want to take you through the nine broad reform areas.
Delivering better services for citizens
These recommendations are about providing more integrated service delivery to improve the end result for citizens. This includes better links across Commonwealth agencies, working more closely with the States and Territories, and finding more flexible ways of working with the third sector. It also includes reducing the regulatory burden on business.
Technology will play an important part in these reforms, which may take some time to fully progress. The Blueprint proposes that a Commonwealth service delivery strategy be developed to bring the various strands together. This is now in the hands of a Secretaries Committee being led and supported by the Department of Finance. Other departments and agencies will also be involved.
Creating more open government
This reform builds on the Gov 2.0 initiative, which sought to identify new ways for the Government to use technology to engage with the public. Key elements include making more government data available to the public and academic community to use, and encouraging the APS to communicate more with the public particularly around service design.
This reform will also see the establishment of a new citizen survey to identify drivers of citizen satisfaction with government services. The results of the survey will be published in departmental annual reports, together with measures taken to improve citizen satisfaction. This follows from what has already been done in New Zealand and Canada.
Enhancing policy capability
The policy reforms are aimed at enhancing strategic policy capability while also improving policy implementation. It includes the establishment of a strategic policy network, development of a policy toolkit, stronger links with academia, and the use of boards to oversee high risk implementation activities.
Reinvigorating strategic leadership
This reform includes the introduction of a new set of values for the APS. When we asked people in the staff forums to recall the 17 current values, most people could recall the gist of only three or four. We think it is important to have a set of memorable values that can be drawn upon to drive our day to day work – in my view this shouldn’t be any more than five.
Strategic leadership will also be boosted through the creation of two new leadership forums – the Secretaries Board (which you can see in the photo in your handout) and the APS200. As members of the Board, Secretaries will discuss strategic issues facing the APS, commission project work, and drive the reform agenda. I chair the Board and I am not interested in multitudes of for information papers – we will be concentrating on practical action and outcomes.
The APS200 also includes SES Band 3 officers and many agency heads. Project teams from the APS200 will oversee cross-agency strategic projects.
And Secretaries’ performance will be assessed against newly defined responsibilities, including the delivery of government programs and collaboration to achieve whole of government objectives.
A revised APSC
The APSC will be revitalised to play a much stronger role in setting frameworks for people management, conducting workforce planning and providing quality assurance & central purchasing of core education and training.
Clarifying and aligning employment conditions
This includes a review of the size and role of the SES that must be completed before any new net growth in SES numbers. The review will be completed before the end of this calendar year.
The reform also includes the development of a new bargaining framework that will provide greater commonality in terms and conditions. In addition, classification and work level standards will be reviewed.
Strengthening the workforce
Reform 7 has a range of recommendations aimed at improving the capability of the workforce. This includes streamlining recruitment, improving mobility and strengthening performance management.
Learning and development will also be bolstered through a new commitment to provide every staff member with some form of significant development opportunity each year.
Ensuring agency agility, capability and effectiveness
Capability reviews, based on the UK model, will introduce a focus on agencies’ institutional capabilities, including strategy, leadership and organisational effectiveness. They will be short, sharp and get to the heart of matters.
The reviews will result in capability improvement plans, which Secretaries will be held accountable for progressing. Follow up reviews will be conducted to assess progress.
Improving agency efficiency
The efficiency dividend will be reviewed against other measures to encourage agency efficiency. There will also be greater use of shared corporate services by small agencies to deliver efficiencies.
Slide 11
I have established in my Department a small implementation team to work with the APSC on the initial phase of rolling out the overall reform agenda.
The team is working on two fronts: both practical implementation and also a cultural change strategy.
In terms of practical implementation – the team has been pulling together plans across all of the reforms to provide an overall sense of where we are up to in implementing the Blueprint.
Each of the reforms has a lead agency that is responsible for driving implementation and these are identified in the Blueprint. The APSC, Finance and PM&C are the lead agencies for the vast majority of the reforms.
An expert panel of public private and community sector leaders will also be convened to report to the Prime Minister on progress of the reform agenda. They will exist independently of anyone involved in the implementation of reforms.
In terms of the cultural change mechanisms, the first step in this is the series of presentations that we have convened to communicate the intent of the Blueprint to the broader APS. As I'm sure you are aware a series of these presentations are being given over the next two months to staff to communicate the reforms.
Slide 12
Because the Blueprint is made up of interconnected reforms, sequencing will have a significant impact.
Some things can be done quickly because they are easy to do, like establishing a Secretaries Board. Others are more complicated and will take time to develop, like fully integrated service delivery.
Some changes represent foundations for the overall reform agenda, and need to be put in place early. Others are building blocks that will follow over time.
A reinvigorated APSC is a big reform, but also a foundation reform. The Government recognised this by providing $38.7m over three years to develop the APSC in the 2010-11 Budget. On the other hand, revising the APS values is a change that cannot be made without first conducting appropriate consultation.
And while many of the reforms can be implemented through mandated change - for example a new governance guide, or a revised performance management framework - the reform agenda also relies on behavioural change, which as we all know does not happen overnight. Cultures can be hard to shift.
For example, the Blueprint calls for greater collaboration and innovation, more engagement with the community, and a much greater focus on outcomes for citizens. Many departments are currently not very outward focussed, and these changes will be hard.
They will be seen by many as risky. But they are important and they need to happen.
Many reforms will be significantly progressed in 2010. For example the strategic policy network has already met, as has the Secretaries Board. A review of the SES is about to get underway, and the APSC is planning for significant changes.
Early engagement with APS leaders on the reforms will be essential for embedding the reforms and achieving longer term cultural change.
As I mentioned earlier, secretaries were consulted throughout the development of the Blueprint, and through the Secretaries Board are actively engaged in the change process.
The Board will have a major role in driving the reform agenda as part of its stewardship role for the public service.
We will also be convening the other new leadership group, the APS200 within the next month to discuss its role in taking forward the reforms in departments and agencies.
Over the course of this year, the consultation strategy will change from explaining the reforms, to consultation by lead agencies on how to implement them. This is the key to implementation – have a clear, strong direction for what is to change, and engage with staff on how to do it.
Slide 13
By coming today, you are already playing a part in implementing the APS reform agenda. The first step in cultural change is building awareness and understanding across the APS of the Blueprint and what it is trying to achieve.
Everyone has a role to play in these reforms. There are a number of changes in approach and behaviour that you can adopt yourselves – in your everyday work.
I look to all of you to think of ideas and ways that you can contribute to implementing the Blueprint.
For example:
- You may wish to seek out more formal policy networks with academic institutions - like having lunch with the academics in your field on a regular basis.
- You could seek out new approaches to consultation and collaboration with citizens – like exploring what could be learnt from social media.
- You might decide to review your existing processes to minimise administrative burdens on your day to day work – you could also share ideas for improvement with your corporate services areas.
- You could work more collaboratively in designing services for citizens across Government and, at times, with other governments – this starts with picking up the phone to your colleagues in other agencies who may have an interesting perspective on your work.
- In participating in recruitment at work, you could push for talent management programs that support identifying and developing employees from diverse backgrounds and across all levels of the organisation;
- You could equally push for a greater emphasis on learning and development – to make sure that your staff are given the support they need.
Slide 14
As I’ve described today, the blueprint is a broad document that spans the public service. As such it provides you with a rare opportunity to pursue change. In fact the blueprint is a mandate for change – a mandate to pursue improvements to help you do your job more effectively.
Those of you who have always wanted to engage more with the community – here is your opportunity to raise it with those you report to.
Those of you who have been frustrated by red tape – you can now point to the Blueprint and ask “what are we doing to meet this government policy?”
And those of you who want to learn and develop your skills, but have had limited opportunities, now is the time to ask “what is this organisation doing to support learning and development?”
And I encourage you to ask these questions.
Each of us can drive change to improve the way we do business for the benefit of the community. We should all seek to make it happen.
Thank you.
I now welcome Patricia Kelly to say a few words about the MAC innovation report.
Last Updated: 18 June 2010