Commissioner’s overview

The State of the Service report is the key mechanism for providing the Australian Public Service (APS), the Government and Parliament with a picture of how well the APS is performing. Its focus is on people employed under the Public Service Act 1999 (the Act), who currently account for some 67% of the Commonwealth public sector.¹

The report identifies the APS’s strengths, its challenges and where it needs to improve to ensure that it delivers effective outcomes for the Australian Government. This tenth State of the Service report paints a picture of an APS which is responding to significant challenges, and which is well-placed to make the most of the opportunities these challenges present.

This year the APS has taken on a range of complex and vital new work in many different areas. The APS has successfully implemented the Welfare to Work reforms, produced the second intergenerational report, and implemented a package of integrated drought assistance in the face of the most severe drought in 100 years. It has helped to combat petrol sniffing by leading the roll-out of non-sniffable Opal fuel in the Central Desert Region, prepared for the APEC Leaders’ Week, and successfully completed the 2006 Census of Population and Housing.

Revenue collected has exceeded Budget estimates for the fifth year in a row. The APS’s promotion of market access for Australian goods and services and initiatives to assist Australian firms have seen exports of goods and services rise to around $210 billion. We have supported a wide range of security-related operational tasks, the scale and tempo of which is comparable to that reached during the Vietnam War. In the coming year, a range of new and significant challenges will be addressed, not the least of which will be implementation of 2007 election commitments.

The range of new initiatives that the APS has been tasked with show that it is trusted to produce results. In recent years, there have been suggestions that levels of trust in the public service are falling. New research shows that Australians are more likely to believe governments can be trusted to do the right thing than are the citizens of 24 other established democratic countries. The research suggests that Australia may be one of the few established democracies where political trust is not in decline—with political trust higher than in the late 1970s and late 1980s.² Australians’ perceptions of corruption among Australian public servants and politicians are also at low levels.

APS employees’ views are generally consistent with these results. Around half agree that their agency has earned a high level of public trust. Only around one in five actively disagree.

It is important that the APS performs in such a way as to sustain and build on these levels of trust. To do so requires a continual focus on embedding the APS Values (the Values), and on building the capacity of APS agencies to deal with current and future challenges.

Reflecting the scale and complexity of government work today, there has been a further consolidation this year of trends towards a more skilled workforce. The APS has changed fundamentally from the public service of 20 years ago. We are more qualified; have more employees with a range of experiences outside the APS; more employees at senior levels; and the large majority of these senior employees have graduate qualifications and many have postgraduate qualifications. This is because the modern APS relies on a highly-skilled workforce to deal with the complex and demanding issues facing Australia. The changing nature of the work mix means that the need for skills has grown accordingly.

Before commenting on this year’s findings, I want to highlight some key results.

The APS grew as a proportion of total Commonwealth employment during 2006–07, while total Commonwealth employment (APS and non-APS combined) declined. Although there have been significant variations over the period, APS numbers are broadly similar to what they were in 1988. Expansion of the APS recently has been driven by the need to support new initiatives of Government across a range of areas from defence and national security to welfare and Indigenous affairs.
Women continue to increase their presence in the APS, these numbers growing at a faster rate than male employment again this year. This growth is also occurring at senior levels. Women are likely, for the first time, to outnumber men at the EL 1 classification within three years. SES bands are also seeing substantial growth—women now comprise 36.1% of the SES, an increase from 34.9% in 2006.
There is a significant trend to greater mature-aged employment, and for employees to come out of retirement to rejoin the APS. The number of older workers in the 55 years and over age bracket rose by 12.7% over the last year. The 55–59 age group is one of two peaks in the age profile for non-ongoing employees, many of them having returned to work after prior service. This is a positive trend at a time when skills are at a premium.
Positive results were also recorded in other areas of staffing with a stabilisation in the employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and growth in the employment of young people. There are continuing declines, however, in the employment of people with disability.

The State of the Service report shows that the APS continues to be a fundamentally healthy institution. In 2006–07, there was a substantial increase in overall rates of job satisfaction. The majority of public servants continue to be satisfied with a range of issues relevant to how actively they engage with their work and with their organisation. APS employees have high rates of satisfaction with their current job, with their work group, and with their understanding of their current role. These are particularly significant results given their strong links with employees’ views about productivity. The majority of employees are also satisfied with their immediate manager, with their work-life balance, and with their agency’s commitment to workplace diversity.

Key areas of strength include:

High levels of pride in working in the APS and in individual agencies—79% of employees agreed they were proud to work for the APS and 69% agreed in regard to their individual agency.
High levels of service-wide productivity that compare very favourably with those in the economy as a whole. This is built on high levels of personal productivity improvement— with over half of employees (55%) reporting that their personal productivity had improved in the last 12 months.
A very positive perception among employees involved in whole of government work about their agency’s collaborative culture and the capability of their colleagues—79% of EL and SES employees agreed that their agency’s culture always or usually encourages a constructive approach to collaboration.
High levels of satisfaction for employees involved in service delivery in terms of the professionalism with which they deliver services to the public. This is complemented by continued high levels of satisfaction reported by most users of government services.

These results suggest that the APS is strongly positioned to meet the challenges set for it by the Government and the community. There are, however, some results which will require all APS managers and staff to focus on ways of improving performance and interagency cooperation and increasing their openness to innovation.

1 Excludes members of the permanent defence forces.

2 T. Donovan, D. Denemark & S. Bowler, ‘Trust, Citizenship and Participation: Australia in Comparative Perspective’ in D. Denemark et al (eds), Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspirations, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2007, pp. 81–106.