Let's go through a few of those doses.

Dose 1: The good news here is that, on July 11, Thodey announced that the deadline for submissions to the review would be extended from 11.59pm on July 13 to midnight on July 31. For some that may be welcome but for those who initially gave up on ever making the July 13 deadline it is of no use at all, as it effectively gives them a little more than two weeks to get their acts together. It's hard to imagine why the deadline should not be extended to the end of September so as to give those keen to make fully considered submissions a fair chance. A sensible deadline would be when the panel is getting close to finalising its views; surely it will not have reached that point by the end of September when extra contributions should still be digestable.

Dose 2: The good news is that, at the time of writing, the review has posted 242 submissions on its website. On the face of it, that's not a bad response. The not-so-good news, based on an inspection of the first 217 submissions on the site, is that:

While identification is not easy, it would seem that none (or at least very few) of the 160 community groups, peak bodies or business leaders have thus far responded to Thodey's request to have a say.

While the 217 submissions examined contain some useful suggestions, they are, overall, disappointingly slight, if with a small number of standouts. This may reflect the needlessly short time allowed for lodgment and the review's vague terms of reference, which give little specific guidance around which to frame submissions. The lack of interest from the academic community is startling.

Most disappointingly, not a single Commonwealth agency, not even a central agency, has, at the time of writing, had a submission published on the review's website. (By way of a benchmark, the Coombs Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration received submissions from 55 Commonwealth agencies. The former Public Service Board's submissions ran to more than 1000 pages, which had a major influence on the commission's report.)

It may be that Thodey, other panel members and their assistants in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet are talking privately to agency heads and others. That's all well and good but it's insufficient. Agencies should make their views public so they can be tested and promote discussion. The Minister for the Public Service, Kelly O'Dwyer, has said she hopes the submissions lodged thus far "encourage others to add their insights and experiences". That's likely but no such encouragement is being provided by Commonwealth agencies – those best placed to do so.

If it's good enough for Thodey to encourage "all Australians" to make their views openly known, it's hard to see why agency heads should not see themselves as included in that invitation. Their absolute reticence thus far is not a great omen about the extent to which the management of Commonwealth agencies is interested in the review.

Dose 3: More good news is that a reference group has been established to help the Thodey panel. The group includes four people who are or have been the heads of public services in other countries – Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore. They should be very useful. But four from overseas? Might that be over-egging it? And why not someone with like qualifications from Australia? There's no shortage of them. At least one would have found an invitation irresistible.

There are four former politicians on the group, one from New Zealand and three from Australia. However, as worthy as these may be, none seems to have had a conspicuous interest or record in public service matters. Not many politicians take an interest in public service improvement although there are at least four former Australian federal ministers who have, three being former ministers for the public service, who are better qualified than the ones who've been selected – maybe they knocked back offers to serve.

The other member of the group is a former official of the Treasury who left that organisation almost 30 years ago to become a senior banker. He has lived in London for the last 10 years, according to reliable sources.

Notwithstanding their combined abilities, the review panel and the reference group do not reflect a convincing balance of background and experience. While there is a former official with recent APS experience, there are three bankers, two advisers to banks and another two with substantial banking experience. Eight of the 15 panel and group members are economists, broadly speaking. On the other hand, for all the talk about a "citizen-centred APS culture" (in the words of PM&C; head Martin Parkinson), the review panel and reference group do not include a soul to represent those interests.

If balance in the backgrounds of people conducting public service reviews is important, the current review doesn't have it.

Dose 4: When recently asked if he felt "sufficiently independent", Thodey said: "I have no doubt in my mind about our independence." That's good news and there are no reasons to doubt the independence of mind of Thodey and his colleagues. However, the leg work for the review is being done by PM&C;, whose role and record should be a prime focus of inquiry.

Thodey might recall that, in the course of the banking royal commission, the independence of a consultant's report commissioned by AMP was undermined when it came to light that AMP officers had sought some changes to it. The APS review panel's report is likely in its entirety to be drafted by PM&C.; There's nothing wrong with that but the review cannot therefore reasonably be touted as being independent.

The silence with which public service agencies have thus far treated the review has been ever so slightly broken by a few of Parkinson's recent comments. In response to a question on outsourcing at a function in early July, he said several agencies "abrogated their core responsibilities and have become over-reliant on consultants. By all means, use consultants when we need surge capacity. Use consultants when it's something we might not do very often ... and there's someone outside who has got expertise.

"But if you get to the space where you basically hand over thinking about policy development, policy prioritisation, to consultants, then you've actually given away your core business. And then you should ask yourself 'what are you doing here?' "

Well said, Doc – elegantly put and absolutely right. It's to be hoped the review panel absorbed your comments, which are consistent with those in a good many of the submissions. Indeed, the review would do a great service if it were to produce criteria to help ministers and agencies make more rational decisions about what functions could be sold or outsourced. This grey and confused area is much in need of enlightenment.

Also at the July function (of course it was about innovation), Parkinson had a crack at "former public servants" who have written "long and tedious articles" critical of some aspects of the review. These scribblers, Parkinson says, should "get over themselves". Gosh, I thought, I could be one of those in his sights; I began to run for cover. I stopped, however, when I saw that the secretary's objections were to those who wanted a "revisit of Coombs" (the 1975 Coombs royal commission), reckoned its terms of reference were "too broad" and believed it to be about the past. Phew, I was in the clear. I've never said any of these things. Indeed, I've said the current review's terms of reference are too narrow as they only cover Public Service Act agencies and are, at the same time, wide and vague. While the lessons of the past should be learned from, I'm sure that even the most powerful review could never amend the past. While I've criticised the Thodey review's lack of independence, I've not suggested a "revisit" of the Coombs royal commission; indeed, I don't think, for what it's worth, a royal commission would be at all sensible.

Parkinson gave further insights into his views about the public service in the Financial Review's supplement BOSS, a publication dedicated to the glorification of bosses. Parkinson says he wants to get rid of "the mandarin model", where, so says a breathless reporter, "a departmental secretary's word is law". Parkinson reckons he doesn't want deference but contributions. "I try to keep an open mind and test ideas ... People have to understand when a secretary says something it is not an edict. We are exploring an idea." It's reported he wants "the most junior person in the room ... to speak up. Not just to talk but to push back."

Well, that's all jolly good stuff, although with a qualification.

There never has been any such operating phenomenon as a "mandarin model". Departmental secretaries in the past have been as chalk and cheese and everything in between, and they cannot be squeezed into some all-defining model. The likes of Garran, Wilson, Wheeler, Tange, Hewitt, Westerman, Rattigan, Bunting and others worked in very different ways. Some may have expected their words to be accepted as law; others certainly didn't.

When at the Public Service Board, Sir Frederick Wheeler institutionalised competing sources of advice and spent a huge amount of time sitting around with junior officers encouraging them to argue and "push back", while during long evenings all present were expected, in the novelist Gerald Murnane's words, to drink continuously. One of Parkinson's predecessors, Sir Geoffrey Yeend, was extremely adept at encouraging unorthodox views and a competition of ideas among his staff, and he recruited people accordingly. The point is, it is historically false to suggest that all or even most senior public servants in days of yore expected their word to be accepted as law and it is terribly unfair to imply they all did.

As in the past, today's secretaries also appear to have different ways of operating. What a surprise. For example, Parkinson's professed approach would seem to be light years away from that of Mike Pezzullo at the Department of Home Affairs, if the latter's patronising, hectoring and pathetic long and tedious recent letter to his senior staff is anything to go by. Anyone wanting to give their staff the shits could do a lot worse than mimic the Pezzullo example. [Editor's note: you can read Pezzullo's masterpiece in full here.]

Of course "push-back" must have its limits, even for Parkinson. So any former public servants, or anyone else presumably, thinking about long and tedious criticisms of the public service review, of which Parkinson was the apparent progenitor, should forget about it and "get over themselves".

Paddy Gourley is a former senior public servant. pdg@home.netspeed.com.au