About 350 staff have expressed interest in taking a voluntary redundancy after the Tax Office decided to offer them before the end of the financial year, although it's likely fewer will actually end up going. The ATO casts this as a project of reshaping and adapting its workforce. Whether these benefits are balanced adequately against the cost of losing corporate memory and experience remains to be seen.

It is troubling there have been reports some staff have been tapped on the shoulder about taking a voluntary redundancy and told they will be performance managed if they refuse. If that's the case, the ATO needs to investigate and remedy the problem making sure it is keeping to its workplace agreement.

The Tax Office has copped a cut to its headcount reaching 4600 in four years, a downsizing Labor says has left remaining staff struggling and the agency under-resourced. It suggests that the ATO's recent tech failures are a product of the cuts, a claim the agency denies.

It emerged two weeks ago a slight winner from this year's budget, for a change, set to gain 40 more staff.

This isn't necessarily a simple win for the agency. The Community and Public Sector Union says the ATO is getting only a small staffing increase despite taking on a major role in the government crackdown on the black economy.

The Australian Services Union representing tax officers has simlarly said previously that staff cuts have left questions whether the ATO had the resources to enact an ambitious agenda set out by its boss, Chris Jordan. While the agency recently had money needed to employ more staff, caps on staffing levels had stopped it from growing, the ASU said.

Some parts of the Coalition government appear determined to keep federal public servant numbers low purely out of an ideological preference for small government.

Public service academics have pointed out the question isn't one purely of keeping staff numbers low.

It's having the right numbers for the tasks the government - and the public - wants the Australian Public Service to carry out. Given there's enough money, and the last budget suggests there is, then the government needs to resource its agencies accordingly.

Judging by recent history, what the public wants and what the Coalition wants from government agencies are two different things. Massive cuts to the Human Service department have been accompanied by a deterioration in service standards and a deeply controversial debt recovery scheme that have damaged the reputation of its agency Centrelink.

Cuts to the Australian Bureau of Statistics have created fears it won't provide the same quality of data needed to inform good government decision making.

The newly-announced review of the APS should keep front and centre in its questions what exactly the public wants from government agencies. It should determine this first, and work from there in figuring out appropriate levels of staffing and funding.

Agencies like the ATO, Human Services and the Bureau of Statistics might find their headcounts growing if the review, and the government, listen.