Appendix A: Case Studies

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Case Study 1: Strengthening trust in the public service to deliver for Australia

Focus: Public service employees are stewards of the public service

Challenges

Weakening public trust in government threatens the health of democracies

Globally, public trust in government is deteriorating. The APS delivers vital community services and policies that affect the lives of millions of people. To do this effectively, public trust is essential.

Recent inquiries highlighted gaps in integrity and stewardship practices, processes and systems

These inquiries provide critical lessons for action on integrity across the service and at all levels, including senior decision-makers. A strategic and coordinated approach to integrity across the service is needed.

Increasing complexity and speed of change means stewardship role of the public service is even more critical

Domestic, regional and international contexts are complex and volatile. Rapid technological and social changes require a forward-thinking public service. Public service stewardship is critical to ensure public need and benefit are central to policy design and delivery.

Achievements

Enduring, system-wide initiatives are working together to strengthen trust and integrity
  • ✔ 18 Reform initiatives to strengthen trust, stewardship and integrity
  • ✔ Initiative intersections are reinforcing integrity and stewardship capability across the service
Stewardship legislated as a new APS Value
  • ✔ Changes to Public Service Act 1999 enshrine Stewardship as an APS Value
  • ✔ All public servants are responsible for leaving the APS in better shape than we found it
  • ✔ Public Service Commissioner’s Directions and resources to value into practice
  • ✔ Legislated agency capability reviews and Long-term Insights Briefs on national challenges embed APS stewardship capability
Louder than Words action plan published
  • ✔ Agencies to self-assess against Commonwealth Integrity Maturity Framework
  • ✔ Integrity in APS eLearning module updated and released May 2024 for all new employees
  • ✔ 450+ participants in SES Masterclass since 2022; additional resources published on APS Academy Integrity Craft toolkit
Further pro-integrity culture and systems uplift
  • ✔ Frameworks, policies and changes to Section 10 of the PGPA Rule 2014 strengthen protections against fraud and corruption
  • ✔ APS staff have guidance and resources to support high standards of integrity
  • ✔ Stage 2 Integrity Reforms to bolster previous reforms with public consultation underway

Benefits to the Community:

Trust in government and public institutions is the “glue” for a cohesive, prosperous and democratic society.

Australians’ trust in government and in public services is relatively high:

  • 58% trust public services (higher when they have actually used these services)
  • Trust in government is higher than the OECD average (46% compared to 39%) and has increased by 8% since 2021

Stewardship and integrity reforms ensure Australians can continue to have high trust in the APS

APS Value of Stewardship commits to the community that APS delivery and advice to government considers the impact of policy on the public now and in the future.

Service-wide culture, systems and accountability for integrity standards provide the community with:

  • Confidence in the public service to do the right thing on behalf of the nation and the diverse communities the APS serves
  • Assurance that APS staff at all levels are empowered to provide frank advice on risks and impacts of policy directions on communities
  • Legislated, enduring protections to ensure the public service is the robust, national asset Australia requires to meet the complex challenges facing the nation in both the short and long term

 

Case Study 2: APS improving public engagement to deliver better services

Focus: Genuine partnership and engagement with Australia’s people, communities and industries

Challenges

Complex problems need collaborative, multi-dimensional solutions

Today’s highly complex geopolitical, social and digital environment requires proactive, genuine partnership and engagement across community, business and industry sectors.

Limited inclusivity means limited insight

Historically, engagement efforts have not been consistent across government agencies. Quality engagement with diverse communities and harnessing their lived experiences of, for example social and economic disadvantage, gender discrimination, ageism, racism, and ableism is essential to good policy and service design.

Increasing complexity and speed of change means stewardship role of the public service is even more critical

Domestic, regional and international contexts are complex and volatile. Rapid technological and social changes require a forward-thinking public service. Public service stewardship is critical to ensure public need and benefit are central to policy design and delivery.

Achievements

Increased recognition of the need for effective partnership and engagement capability
  • ✔ More agencies are seeing the need for partnership and engagement capabilities in their workforce, increasing from 21% in 2023 to 60% in 2024 (APS Agency Survey, 2023; 2024)
Whole of Australian Government principles through the Charter of Partnerships and Engagement

The Charter provides the essential principles for effective engagement and partnering to meet the needs of a modern, diverse Australia through:

  • ✔ Good practice guidance and self-assessment tools
  • ✔ Embedding these principles in APS Academy training and learning experiences
  • ✔ Cross-government workshops on effective change management
Systemic cultural capability uplift

Appointed a First Assistant Commissioner and First Nations Systems Lead at APSC:

  • ✔ Addressing systemic barriers to the APS engaging in genuine partnerships with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander People
  • ✔ Building cultural capability of the APS
Engaging with business and industry

Senior APS executives engaged business leaders to:

  • ✔ connect APS and private sector executives to address shared problems such as data transformation and AI
  • ✔ Harness business insights via masterclasses
  • ✔ Private sector knowledge embedded in leadership development
  • ✔ Market stewardship pilots encourage strategic and proactive engagement and collaboration with stakeholders

Benefits to the Community:

Improved ability of the APS to engage and partner across business, academia and the not-for-profit sectors produces value for the Australian community by leveraging diverse expertise to inform policy and services in an increasingly complex environment

Clear expectations that the APS puts people and business at the centre of policy and service design by meaningfully engaging with communities, academia and industry

  • APS staff have practical resources for how to do this in practice with tools to support assessment, review, and continuous improvement in partnering.
  • Corporate Plans leverage the Charter so that processes and skills are integrated into agencies’ future planning

“Reliable and accessible services, when and how you need them” is the APS Vision for service excellence

  • The Charter supports this Vision by ensuring that services are user and client centred.
  • Engagement data is a necessary ingredient to achieving this.
  • Better customer service experiences link to strengthened trust in government.

First Nations Systems Lead drives change by:

  • Delivering insights about systemic issues and for genuine partnerships with First Nations people.
  • Cultural Capability Hub for APS staff was established as a precursor for genuine partnerships.
  • Extension of First Nations talent programs, establish a pipeline to the APS senior executive.

Harnessing private sector data and analytics via business partnerships 

  • Strengthened collaboration with the business sector to address shared challenges such as AI.
  • Integrating business insights for more effective, industry relevant decision-making.

 

Case Study 3: An APS that leverages and values the diversity of Australia

Focus: Setting the standard for equity, inclusion and diversity

Challenges

Through the Public Service Act 1999, the APS workforce should reflect the diversity of the Australian population

Diversity of gender, culture, age and ability in the APS enriches policy and service design, so that they better reflect the needs of the community. However, barriers to career advancement and remuneration limit diverse representation.

Persistent gender pay gap

The national gender pay gap is closing, with the APS gap now at 4.5% compared to the Australian Bureau of Statistics economy wide figure of 11.5%. Women’s lower earnings compared to men results in economic and productivity costs for Australia.

APS workforce more diverse but not at the senior levels

APS employment data show that while the cultural and linguistic diversity of the APS is largely reflective of the working age population at 25%, representation drops to 11% across the senior executive service.

Insufficient systemic change prevents progress on Closing the Gap

The Productivity Commission’s recent review found that fundamental changes to how government engages with the First Nations community and shares power and decision-making is required to deliver on the Agreement.

Achievements

Landmark legislative reforms to reduce the Gender Pay Gap
  • ✔ Passage of the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill 2023 makes employer pay gap data publicly available for the first time. Commonwealth public sector employer pay gaps will be published in early 2025.
  • ✔ Following Respect@Work reforms passed in 2022 Commonwealth public sector employers with 100 or more employees now report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The first report – covering 2022 – was released in June 2024. As reporting matures it will allow for comparison between private and public sector progress in closing the wage gap.
CALD Employment Strategy driving whole of APS change
  • ✔ Setting standards for cultural safety and understanding.
  • ✔ Cultural capability development and accountability for leaders.
  • ✔ Establishing inclusive recruitment, mobility and progression processes.
  • ✔ Commitment to 24% CALD representation in the SES by 2030 to reflect parity with the Australian community.
Boosting First Nations Employment in the APS to 5% by 2030

3 pillars of action create new employment opportunities and tackle barriers to engagement, retention and advancement

  • ✔ Boosting First Nations in Senior Executive Service to 100 (SES 100).
  • ✔ Growing a talent pipeline by supporting 75 Executive Level employees.
  • ✔ Strengthening system-wide cultural capability and accountability.
Senior executives hear directly from First Nations staff

Collaboration Circles successfully building APS cultural capability

  • ✔ All 6 recommendations to the COO Committee devised to improve APS cultural awareness training were endorsed without change.
  • ✔ Building on this success, the current cycle has begun working on retention strategies for First Nations staff in the APS.

Benefits to the Community:

To deliver best outcomes, the APS should reflect the diversity of the people it serves and ensure that people from all communities have equity of opportunity within the service as a career

Leading on gender equality

  • The Gender Pay Gap in the Australian Public Service is 4.5%.
  • APS bargaining 2023-24 created common conditions to support gender equality, including clauses related to family and domestic violence support, respect at work, equal parental leave entitlements, and flexible work.
  • In the broader economy, more than half (57%) of employers took corrective action as a result of WGEA’s reporting, showing the impact these reforms have on workplace equality.
  • Although higher than the Commonwealth public sector, the national gender pay gap is now the lowest it has ever been.

Integrated reforms that increase transparency, accountability and action plans to create a workforce culture that thrives on diversity

  • 93% support the goals and development of the CALD Employment Strategy and Action Plan (public and internal engagement data shows).
  • Agency heads are accountable to report progress twice a year.
  • SES training delivered to recruit, build and manage multicultural teams.

First Nations leadership boosted across the APS

  • SES 100 placed 23 candidates into SES roles across 12 APS agencies, 5 of those were attracted from outside the APS (as at September 2024).
  • A second SES100 APS-wide recruitment exercise at SES Band 1 and Band 2 level will commence from November 2024, with a merit pool to be established in March 2025.

 

Case Study 4: Strengthening APS capability to meet Australia's current and future needs

Focus: The APS continuously improves its capability

Challenges

The 2019 Independent Review of the APS noted that while the APS was not broken, it was not performing at its best

Outsourcing large amounts of work to labour hire and consultancies eroded APS capability and quality service delivery, often delivering poor return on investment. Workforce capability must be restored to ensure the APS remains a capable, trusted institution.

Sustained, systemic, whole-of-service transformation 

The government noted the need for ‘service-wide transformation', encompassing both short-term change and long-term reform, to achieve better outcomes and more efficiently serve the government, the Parliament and the Australian public.

Australia faces increasingly complex social and geopolitical challenges and needs a capable APS

Australia faces increasing complex challenges from multiple fronts. The APS’s capability gaps require strategic, integrated, whole-of-service treatment to ensure Australia can navigate evolving domestic, regional and global challenges.

Achievements

Restoring APS capability through the Strategic Commissioning Framework
  • ✔ The APS is bringing core work back in-house so core public service work is done by public servants.
  • ✔ Agencies have identified core work that should not be outsourced and have set commitments to begin bringing this back in-house in 2024-25.
  • ✔ APS-wide, agency targets for 2024-25 total around $527 million.
  • ✔ Where outsourcing of core work is necessary, the SCF ensures knowledge and skills transfer to the APS.
Capability Reviews are supporting a culture of continuous improvement
  • ✔ Public Service Act amendments require that all departments of state and large agencies participate in a capability review every five years, measuring readiness for future challenges
  • ✔ Taking effect from 11 December 2024, capability reviews are published on the APSC website.
  • ✔ 6 reviews completed, generating insight about capability gaps and opportunities to address these.
  • ✔ Each review applies a framework that supports a structured assessment of the agency’s organisational capability
Targeted and scalable learning solutions for policy challenges, now and emerging
  • ✔ Round 1 of the APS Capability Reinvestment Fund saw 10 initiatives funded to deliver collaborative projects across 23 government agencies. Round 2 projects are underway.
  • ✔ These multi-agency partnerships generate impactful and long-term solutions on shared priority areas and their challenges that can be scaled across the service.
  • ✔ The APS Indo-Pacific Executive Development Program is an example of developing capabilities to navigate challenges and opportunities in and with the Indo-Pacific

Benefits to the Community:

A properly functioning APS is essential to the prosperity and security of all Australians. Rebuilding capability ensures that public institutions have the skills needed to tackle complex issues, and assurance that capability investment is done in the public interest

Bringing core work in-house deepens system-wide capability and reduces the risks to integrity, expertise and public trust posed by excessive outsourcing. 

  • Agencies are now in their first year of implementing the Strategic Commissioning Framework.
  • APS Agencies have committed to bring core public service work back in-house in 2024–25 to the value of around $527 million.

Transparency and assurance that the APS has the skills and capability needed to serve the public

  • Capability Reviews bring accountability and transparency to how agencies continuously improve organisational capability.
  • Repeating and publishing Capability Review reports and agency action plans commits agencies to progress milestones.
  • Agencies are supported through the broader system-wide Reform Agenda to implement action plans.

Collaborating across the Indo-Pacific region to address climate change 

  • The Capability Reinvestment Fund Round 1 prioritised complex domestic and international challenges.
  • The inaugural APS Indo-Pacific Executive Development program fosters stronger connections with the Indo-Pacific on issues like climate change and energy challenges.
  • The Program commenced on 2 November 2023 with 94 participants from 27 agencies, providing a rich diversity of perspectives shared throughout the 7-month learning journey.