Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called yesterday for sweeping reform of the public service, announcing that a new taskforce would be established to seek improvements.

The taskforce will be led by the head of the Prime Minister's Department, Terry Moran, with an advisory group to supervise an international benchmarking exercise to compare Australian performance with leading bureaucracies around the world. The results will be used to develop a blueprint for reform by February.

In his John Paterson Oration to the Australian and New Zealand School of Government in Canberra yesterday, Mr Rudd heaped praise on the public service and said he wanted to make Australia's bureaucracy the best ''anywhere in the world''.

''In the face of the challenges facing us in the decade ahead, it is not enough for us to say that the APS is doing a good job and therefore the status quo is fine.''

Mr Rudd said the federal bureaucracy must renew itself by investing more in developing the right people.

''Last year three-quarters of agencies that were able to estimate their expenditure on learning and development said they invested less than 2per cent of their budgets in their people,'' he said.

For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times