Reducing red tape in the APS

Preface

Business processes that promote good governance and strong accountability are essential to the administration of government. They provide the means by which we meet our responsibilities as public servants. They are crucial to integrity.

However, we also have a duty to be efficient and effective in the way we manage ourselves and our business. We need to ensure that the regulatory and administrative processes by which we structure our decision-making do not lead to risk-averse, inefficient and time-wasting behaviour.

Unnecessarily burdensome and prescriptive administrative requirements can increase the cost of doing our business. They may divert resources away from the delivery of important services to the Australian public, lower workplace productivity and reduce job satisfaction levels. This report is about reducing the Australian Public Service’s (APS’s) internal processes and, equally important, finding ways to help stop them being replaced or reintroduced in the future.

This report had its genesis in November 2005, when Portfolio Secretaries commissioned A Report on Red Tape in Internal Australian Government Administration. It identified a range of initiatives to reduce the administrative burden on agencies without undermining public accountability. Implementation of these measures is already well underway. It will lead to some significant areas of red tape being cut—processes that were unnecessarily cumbersome, too frequent, resulted in duplication or were of little functional purpose.

One-off exercises of this nature are clearly valuable. However, by necessity, their impact is incomplete and insufficient. The Management Advisory Committee (MAC) recognised that to achieve a sustained reduction in the plethora of internal bureaucratic requirements a more strategic, principles driven approach was necessary.

This MAC report sets out a framework to help drive that change in the APS’s thinking and approach to administrative process. It includes basic principles for scrutinising proposed and existing regulatory and administrative measures, how they can be designed to impose least cost and how they can be managed effectively once they are in place. It suggests approaches to ensuring that processes do not become redundant, ineffective or inappropriate over time. The design and analysis of administrative ‘solutions’ needs to be systematic, transparent, informed and periodically reviewed.

The framework complements the Government’s response to the Report of the Taskforce on Reducing Burdens on Business. The report also notes that the Business Cost Calculator, developed by the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, will now be used to measure and analyse regulatory costs in an objective and standardised manner. The Government has mandated the use of this tool in assessing the compliance cost of regulatory proposals affecting businesses.

The framework will also partially fulfil the commitment of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to reduce the regulatory burden imposed by the three tiers of government. My view is simple: a public service that over-regulates itself will end up over-regulating citizens.

The principles are self-evident, but they can easily be lost sight of if we focus too heavily on process rather than good outcomes. Using procurement and recruitment as instances, the report illustrates the importance of efficiency and effectiveness in designing and delivering administrative requirements. Put simply, the benefi ts of administrative processes should outweigh their costs—whether imposed on others or ourselves.

Certainly the framework will require a change in the behaviour of those responsible for setting regulatory and administrative requirements. Red tape is often the product of an almost automatic response to addressing the organisational problems that emerge by introducing another rule, regulation or guideline. It is symptomatic of an underlying risk-averse attitude. We will need to overcome such tendencies if we are to ensure a proportionate and appropriate response to the issues and concerns faced by Australian Government agencies.

The MAC is committed to delivering better value for money for the Australian public. One key way to meet that goal is to lower the costs and improve the value of administrative processes within the APS. We will take a keen interest in agencies’ implementation of the framework.

Dr Peter Shergold AM

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Reducing red tape in the APS

Preface