The report (Terry Moran's Ahead of the Game review) was published nine years ago.

On Tuesday, another report was released: David Thodey and his team's interim findings. It suggests ... well, exactly what I just wrote above. And that's a shortened list; there are many more points I could add that are equally prominent in both papers.

My intention isn't to rubbish the efforts of Thodey and his panel; it's to show how difficult change can be in an organisation with the APS's immense inertia.

In some cases, the failure to act on commonsensical recommendations can be blamed on senior public servants' shortcomings. Here's a small example: despite the benefits that transparency brings to public policy, bureaucrats are still likely to praise a colleague who escapes a Senate estimates hearing without divulging any information, but will label another as naive if they offer up details willingly and directly.

Most of the time, though, the failure to apply sensible "fixes" has been the fault of ministers, not public servants. They simply lack the motivation to expend effort on the long-term process that is public sector reform.

So what should one make of this latest review, commissioned by a prime minister who no longer sits in Parliament? Its final recommendations will soon be delivered to either the extremely shaky Morrison government or to Labor, which didn't ask for it.

Ten years ago, when Moran began his review, he was Australia's most-powerful bureaucrat. He had the prime minister's enthusiastic backing and his review was a government priority – involving, besides himself, the Treasury secretary, the public service commissioner and other government, academic and business heavyweights.

A handful of Moran's recommendations were adopted: at-times brutally honest capability reviews were published; the APS now has a secretaries board; and work-level standards exist, even if they are often ignored. But the government failed to make headway against the main problems Moran outlined – which is why it's entirely unsurprising Thodey has unearthed them.

The Thodey review has some hits: a long-overdue, if woolly-worded, admission that the APS pay system is broken.

It also has some misses. For example, there's little point in trying to increase external recruitment if no one's willing to tackle the main impediment: lengthy delays in the hiring process itself, followed by even lengthier delays awaiting security vetting, which for many public service jobs shouldn't even be a requirement.

At the very least, the latest report catalogues what senior public servants are complaining about, even if there is little prospect of change. Whichever party is in power after the election would do well to read it, and know what its workforce is thinking.

For more coverage, read the next issue of The Public Sector Informant, published on April 2.