Fiona Nash, who announced the federal government decision to decentralise the public service in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney in April, said she took umbrage when people suggested departments needed incentives to move staff to bush towns.

"Moving to regions is the incentive itself. We've got cheaper rates, cheaper rents, we've got fabulous lifestyle, we've got everything on offer out in the regions you could possibly want to bring up a young family," she said.

"The person down the road's going to bring your dog back and if you get a flat tyre someone's going to help you."

Senator Nash, speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia conference in Canberra on Wednesday, said decentralisation would stop public servants from narrowing their thinking when forming policy.

"You can getting a very insular approach to policy thinking about when we're looking nationally, if we're only looking through the prism of capital cities," she said.

"People out in the regions are different, and they often have a different approach, which is great, it just brings into the melting pot of excellent policy thinking about where we want the nation to go."

However she reiterated her leader Barnaby Joyce's promise not to target all departments for relocation, and said the decentralisation project would have limits.

"Clearly they're not going to go everywhere, and clearly we're not going to move policy entities out, they've got to have a connect to ministers and government and other departments," Senator Nash said.

"But there are obviously going to be some that can be moved and, why not?"

When asked how the government would measure the success of decentralisation, she said it would focus on the "psyche" of regional towns.

The National Party-led push to force relocations of departments and agencies will be considered by cabinet in August, and comes after Mr Joyce faced accusations of pork barrelling over the controversial relocation of the pesticides authority to his own electorate of New England.

The government is yet to outline its criteria for which departments and agencies face being moved, but non-policy related workforces were highlighted as a priority in the April 19 announcement by Senator Nash.

A template business case for relocations is being prepared by the Finance Department and cabinet will decide on who stays and who goes by the end of the year.