State of the Service Report Collection

The Australian Public Service Commission, working with the National Library of Australia and other partners, has brought together the complete series of reports on the state of the Australian Public Service since Federation.

These reports are a valuable record of the development of the Australian Public Service as a national institution over more than a century.

They show a Service that has evolved as Australia has grown, from 7 agencies in the early 1900s to 102 agencies in 2025, and from a workforce comprised mostly of telegraph messengers to one with more than 220 job roles.

Since the early 1900s, there has been just a handful of years where no annual report on the Service was published. The cadence changed during the war years due to more pressing priorities, and there was a brief pause at the start of the Hawke Government, as a changeover from a Board of Commissioners to new arrangements took place.

The PM&C Library identified gaps in online records since the first report in 1904. The APSC then worked to piece the puzzle together, locating 28 missing reports and working with the NLA to digitise and upload them across relevant sub-collections.

The series of reports contains unexpected gems, like this letter from Prime Minister Curtin to Commissioner Thorpe in 1944, discovered in a filing cabinet decades later and included in the Commissioner ‘s Report in 1988-89 - 1988/1989, PP no. 290 of 1989

Visit the State of the Service Report Collection - State of the Service Reports - Trove