Chapter 4: The Values and relations with the Government and Parliament

Conclusions

The relationship between the APS and Ministers and their offices is critical to the smooth operation of government. The interface between politics and administration has always featured heavily in the ongoing debate and discussion about public administration, and has been a central focus of public administration literature in Australia and elsewhere for a century and more. What does appear to have changed in more recent times is the extent to which public servants have contact with Ministers and their offices. This is a key finding from the employee survey, that 26% of all APS employees had been in contact with Ministers or their advisers in the previous two years.

For public servants, making judgments about the application of the APS Values and balancing them is part of building a strong and mature relationship with Ministers’ offices. For most employees, this happens without any challenge being faced. For those who faced a challenge, most found that the action they took to resolve the challenge was effective, and most are confident that they can balance the Values effectively.

However, handling the relationship and any challenges arising from it now potentially faces a wider range of employees. It is important that agencies ensure that employees likely to come into contact with Ministers or their advisers have the capacity to manage the challenges that inevitably arise, and that they have available ready and reliable support from those around them. Some middle level public servants in particular are not confident, and even where protocols are in place to assist them, they are not always aware of them. The wider interaction adds to the case for clear agency policies or protocols for interactions with Ministers and their offices, and for ensuring employees are aware of them. In improving this awareness, it is also important that agencies do not cause any misunderstanding by Ministers or their advisers; the policies or protocols should be aimed clearly to support APS employees to meet their responsibilities for high quality services to the Minister and for accountability. They should not impact adversely on timeliness, or inhibit the provision of proactive and relevant advice. Indeed, they should be designed to support a close relationship of trust and mutual respect between APS employees and Ministers and their advisers.

The employee survey found that almost one-third of employees who had appeared before a federal parliamentary committee had never received formal training in this matter. Agencies should be ensuring that employees who are likely to appear before parliamentary committees are well equipped to respond in a manner that is consistent with their rights and responsibilities. One of the main methods of ensuring that employees are well equipped to respond to committees is the provision of relevant and adequate training.

In terms of recordkeeping, the high level of review activity and increasing incidence of agency-wide policies for dealing with electronic records suggest a growing awareness among agencies of the need to modernise their recordkeeping systems. However, the evidence also suggests that some agencies still need to take a more strategic approach to records management, particularly in relation to electronic records. Small agencies, in particular, continue to have a lower level of review activity, although they are anticipating a greater level of review activity in the immediate future. Their employees are also less likely to see good recordkeeping as an agency priority or to be satisfied with levels of training and information.

Differences in employee perceptions of the importance of recordkeeping and the availability of appropriate training and access to information, particularly among higher-level staff, also suggest that, while agencies are moving in the right direction, further work needs to be done to ensure that agency policies are implemented in practice. While the NAA has produced material specifically aimed at the needs of managers, targeted training and information that meet the needs of middle and senior management continue to be a priority area for further development within agencies.