We’ve heard that advice to government is increasingly contested, with many organisations and individuals providing views and information to ministers to help them make decisions.
- How can the APS build and maintain its influence and trust with Ministers?
We’ve heard how important it is that the APS is well placed to deliver the highest quality advice to ministers.
- How can we ensure the APS continues to deliver frank and fearless advice to government?
We’ve heard that in a complex, fast-paced world, it is vital that the relationships between the Australian Public Service, the government of the day and the broader political class are based on a common understanding of respective roles and responsibilities.
- How do we make sure these relationships are effective, empathetic and delivering in the best interests of the people of Australia?
What does a trusting and respectful partnership between the Australian Public Service and ministers, parliamentarians and their advisors look like? What do all parties need to bring to the table? Tell us what you think!
Something needs to be done about the relationship between inexperienced, underqualified political advisers and SES within departments. It is incredible that advisers are now the gatekeepers between SES secretaries and the minister. I understand in a 24/7 media cycle, ministers must delegate to advisers, but this split is just incredible and has led to the ministers being ill-advised and ignorant of the emerging issues and trends under their watch.
I really think the APS Review needs to look into the way advisers operate, how they interact with departments and who has oversight for them. I have often seen advisers pushing departments to change formal advice or not put up formal briefs.
I think that the first point in the conclusion of your 'Consultation summary report' (ie It is clear from the consultations that managing these tensions – and executing a transformation of the APS – will require an elegant mix of political will and leadership, ......... The importance of all of these ingredients and complexity of navigating these tensions cannot be overstated. ) nicely summaries what I see as the key challenge of the Review (ie how to persuade politicians and their advisors that the APS (including its advice)) should not to be used as a tool in political point-scoring.
I am not surprised that the Review (at least as far as I saw skimming your website) has yet to come up with an 'answer' to this!
I suspect that improving the current situation will take a co-incidence of: Minister(s) willing to take a risk (eg to disclose frank and fearless advice - and to say that nevertheless that is not the government's views; Opposition members refraining from criticising the government solely on that basis; influential non-politicians standing up for the APS; and a strong APS Commissioner doing likewise.
Perhaps the Review can meet with all Federal politicians in a single, closed session after the Election and before Parliamentary hostilities re-commence and try to elicit a suitable commitment from them?
If successful, that would be a huge achievement for the Review.
I suspect we need legislative change to achieve these aspirations.
We might've sort of been there up until I think it was the Hawke government abandoned the long-term departmental head structure.
Things then incrementally deteriorated until Howard instituted more politically motivated appointments of departmental secretaries.
We somehow need to convince government to change its attitude to the APS.
The whole point of a career public service is to ensure the APS can continue to deliver frank and fearless advise to the government of the day without being fired, pushed sideways etc.
Imagine you are a member of the APS contingent workforce and are keen to impress so you can secure a permanent position. How frank and fearless are you now?
Let's now stretch that thinking. Your still a contingent worker and Its a couple of months down the track. You are working in the aged care sector of the APS responsible for ensuring care homes are doing the right thing. This is your bag - you've spent a whole career working in the aged care sector and was consulted on the aged care reforms all those years ago. This is how you got the gig as a contingent worker with the federal government.
A piece of work comes across your desk indicating there are serious compliance issues in the care homes sector. Your still keen to get that permanent position and know that this report comes at a time when the government is hunkered down by another scandal in the financial sector and would not welcome this report into problems with the care homes. Are you still frank and fearless?
Now imagine the same scenario but this time you are a permanent employee in the APS observing reductions in the average staffing levels. Still frank? Still fearless?
A professional, career public service is essential for maintaining government services. Period.
The public service needs to be totally impartial and able to keep information in confidence (in my experience it already does this). This gives ministers the ability to trust advice as being accurate and free from bias.
In some cases ministers might not like this advice, but the public service will not win any respect from them or anyone else if it supplies only ‘convenient facts’ for whichever government is in power.
The public service should avoid partisan comment at all times. For example, if you do a Google search for the partisan phrase, “electricity bill shorten” then you’ll find it several times on public service websites, which is unfortunate.
Engendering ‘trust’ is an interesting challenge. General public trust in public servants is at 37% (Roy Morgan poll) and politicians is at 16%. If we assume public servants and politicians are representative of the public they serve, then the odds of there being reciprocal trust between a randomly selected public servant and member of parliament would only be 6%.
It would be nice if trust increased, but in the meantime we need to work with the 94% absence of mutual trust and look for checks-and-balances that enable effective work to occur regardless.
A major change over the thirty years, since I joined the APS, and now is that it is now rare for EL2 level staff to meet with and interactively brief Ministers, whereas it used to be common.
The practice that has evolved, particularly over the past fifteen years, is that Deputy Secretaries and Division heads determine what the advice to the Minister will be; and if they so decide information extraneous to that determination is not included and staff are directed not to work on refining that information. Clearly there is a need for succinctness and brevity given the demands on Ministers' time, but not infrequently these needs can be a cover for dogma and personal peccadillos.
You want billion dollar examples to substantiate. Here are a couple.
Neither the Department of Communications or the Department of Innovation & Industry sought to challenge the ACCC ruling that Telstra would have to provide access to any broadband infrastructure it built at a price determined by the competition authorities. Telstra said it would refuse to build broadband infrastructure under these circumstances, leading inexorably to the NBN. There were plenty of EL2s who thought the ACCC ruling nuts, but none were allowed to develop a case to challenge it. Note the ACCC has implicitly confessed it got wrong with its recent ruling on regional mobile.
Similarly, the South Korean solution to the provision of universal broadband in 1996 was to make mandatory the provision of fibre to the home for all new developments. The Korean policy was well known by senior Department of Communications staff, but rejected without any analysis because 'government should not chose technology'. Note fibre is cheaper than copper for new developments when this technology becomes mainstream.