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Chapter 9: Building APS capability
This chapter examines some of the issues that are central to measuring performance and building capability at an organisational and individual level, and through them at a Service-wide level.
At an organisational level, a focus on business outcomes, and particularly on assessing performance against policy or program objectives, has been at the centre of Australian public sector reform over the last 20 years. While the importance of this focus is generally acknowledged, agency approaches to performance measurement vary, and ongoing refinement of assessment frameworks continues.
The same focus on business outcomes has increasingly underpinned agency approaches to human resource management, fostering a strategic approach to deploying, developing, assessing and rewarding agency employees. Looking to the longer term, agencies are beginning to apply the same outcomes-focused approach to planning for the workforce of the future. This means anticipating future business requirements and planning recruitment, capability development, and succession management policies to ensure that such requirements can be met against the current background of demographic change.
At an individual level, performance management is now widely used to link high-level organisational objectives to individual performance appraisal and all agencies have performance management frameworks in place. The performance management process itself has also been increasingly linked to individuals’ learning and development goals, ensuring that they have the capability to enable agencies to deliver against organisational objectives. Leadership development has been a key feature of many agencies’ learning and development agendas.
While much of the focus on building capability has been at the agency level, it is also important to consider whole of government capabilities such as the capacity to work collaboratively across organisational boundaries and to focus on the broader needs of government.
The chapter draws on recent work by MAC, the ANAO, Finance, and the APS Commission, as well as the agency and employee surveys to examine:
- how organisations assess their performance
- agency approaches to managing people for present and future business outcomes
- individual performance management
- agency approaches to learning and development (including leadership development)
- whole of government capabilities.