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Last updated: 3 December 2003
Workforce ageing: Materials for Human Resource practitioners in the APS
Appendix 1
People count-Using APSED data for workforce planning
What is APSED?
The Australian Public Service Employment Database (APSED) stores employment data for all APS employees. APSED is maintained by the APS Commission and the data is supplied to APSED from the HR systems of APS agencies.
Data items for individual APS employees include:
employment status and category (ongoing/non-ongoing, full-time/part-time) movement details (agency, classification, location etc) age gender and, if provided, education details and EEO data (whether the individual is an Indigenous Australian, whether they have a disability, their country of birth, and details of first language).
What can APSED do for agencies?
APSED can assist the workforce planning of APS agencies by providing evidence for evaluation of the changing nature of the APS or agencies and the impact of people management policies on the structure of the APS or agencies:
- APSED can benchmark an agency against the whole of the APS or other agencies
- APSED can assist the comparative analysis of an agency's employment issues over time
- APSED can be used as part of wider APS or research projects and in conjunction with other data sources such as surveys and other databases.
APS Commission staff working on APSED are qualified and experienced in data extraction, manipulation and analysis and possess specialised IT knowledge, providing you with a knowledgeable, managed service. As well as providing a tailored service, we now have a feature that allows users to access some data directly, through the APSED Internet Interface.
The APSED Internet Interface (APSEDII)
APSEDII is a new facility providing user friendly, internet based access to APSED data. The interface facilitates workforce planning and benchmarking by allowing agencies to produce data similar to that published in the APS Statistical Bulletin. Agencies are able to run restricted queries to provide Bulletin style tables with data about their own organisation and, for comparative purposes, about other agencies in their size grouping.
The interface produces charts and tables and also allows users to download the queried results and manipulate the data further in other applications such as Excel. For example a small agency might be interested to see how its classification distribution by gender compares to other small agencies or it might be interested in comparing its classification by age profile to other agencies. The interface will allow the user to make the appropriate selections on the web page then generate the query and any charting or download requirements.
Access to the system
The internet interface site can be accessed by following links on the Australian Public Service Commission's Internet site.
The interface is presented in a user-friendly point and click style with instructions and help available on the website.
There are two modes of access, general users and restricted users. General users include everyone with access to the Internet. Restricted users are designated individuals within agencies who can access the system through a secure logon and password procedure. These users will be able to view individual records on the system for their own agency only. As privacy considerations are paramount and the individual record data sensitive, general users will only have access to confidentialised data groupings.
What does the APS Commission use APSED for?
Data from APSED is used for the annual State of the Service Report and the APS Statistical Bulletin, as well as research for policy development.
How is APSED data being used?
The following recent requests for APSED data are from agencies and external clients who are using the information to assist in the accurate formulation of workforce planning and workplace studies:
time series analysis between a particular agency and the whole of the APS on age profiles and separation rates age and classification profile for an agency to allow them to undertake a comparative analysis between their agency and the whole of the APS analysis of an agency's graduate recruitment program numbers over time to benchmark against APS-wide trends time series analysis of ongoing APS staff by agency, classification, gender and employment status for an academic study.
Some publicly available current publications that have used APSED data include the State of the Service report, the APS Statistical Bulletin and the Management Advisory Committee report on Organisational Renewal.
APSED and privacy
The APS Commission ensures that all use of APSED data for research purposes complies with the Privacy Act 1988, in particular the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs).
Access to an individual employee's employment record is regulated by the IPPs, which limit the use and disclosure of data to ensure that individuals cannot be identified.
Access to APSED in the Commission is limited to the APS Commission Executive and to authorised employees responsible for ensuring that the records are accurate and complete, or who are authorised to access data from APSED for accountability or research purposes.
For more details, see the Privacy Statement on our web site.
Costs
Access to APSEDII is free. Research and analysis projects will be undertaken on a cost recovery basis, and cost will be dependent on the size and nature of the request.
Find out more
Enquiries regarding research and analysis services should be directed to
Sue Johnson
Director
APSED
Review and Evaluation Group
T: 02 6202 3579
