Detailed reports

Section 5: Equal Employment Opportunity

The PS Act and the Commissioners Directions require agencies to put in place Workplace Diversity Programs that promote diversity and help prevent discrimination. The APS Value on equity in employment requires in particular measures aimed at eliminating any employment-related disadvantage on the basis of:

• being an Indigenous Australian;
• gender;
• race or ethnicity; or
• physical or mental disability.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) data is supplied to agencies by individuals on a voluntary basis, and entered onto APSED. Overall, non-response varies from 30.9% for Indigenous status to 32.8% for disability status, and also varies between agencies.

This year, for the first time, the Public Service Commissioner’s report on Diversity in the APS is included in the State of the Service Report 2003. This approach ensures that workplace diversity is considered in context, and that clear links are made with other organisational performance issues considered in the report. For this reason, more comprehensive tables on agency by EEO group will appear in this Bulletin.

Figure 10 shows the change in the number for the four EEO groups from their proportion at June 1994. Each of these numbers is weighted using June 1994 total APS number as a base. Weighting eliminates the effects that the changes in the overall size of the APS have on representation. The index is given a value of 100 at June 1994, and rises and falls proportionally with the particular group’s change in the weighted number over time. For example, at June 1994 the number of Indigenous Australians (IA) was 3213 out of an ongoing APS population of 141,660. By 1998 the IA number had dropped to 2905 but the ongoing APS number had dropped greater proportionally to 108,426. Therefore the weighted IA number for 1998 is 3795.4, which is nearly 120% of the original index.