Bureaucrats also needed to work better to engage citizens with the process of building policy from the ground up, rather than unveiling completed schemes and consulting late in the process when there were fewer chances to make changes.

The permanent secretary of Britain's Department of Health, Sir Chris Wormald, said forcing bureaucrats to ask what a policy was actually supposed to do led to better outcomes and he pointed to the success of simply worded policy tests in departments across the United Kingdom.

The tests prompt policy makers to ask what the policy is for, what it is supposed to do and who it should directly serve in clear language tailored to the work of different departments.

"What a minister would write on a submission is, 'Yeah, but what's the point? What is the point of this policy?' By which they meant, 'If I was standing at the dispatch box, how would I actually explain why we're doing it to a normal person?'

"The bluntness of the language is really important actually to make us think, 'Yeah, how would we explain this to a taxpayer?' That tends not to be, 'We set out KPIs at 64.2 per cent' or whatever," Sir Chris said.

Sir Chris said British civil servants, who were mostly based in London, were very comfortable at university seminars and attending think tank workshops, but could struggle talking to people in communities who relied on government services.

It was important not to lose the connection with world experts, but there was more room for citizen engagement, Sir Chris, who spoke on Thursday at a panel organised by the Institute of Public Administration Australia, said.

Department of Human Services Secretary Renée Leon said there were important lessons for Australia to take from efforts in the UK's civil service.

She said it was important to hear the "voice of the citizen" when public servants were developing policies, which was a skill the public service had probably neglected.

"Quite often those minor parties that have been elected and have balance of power - especially in the upper house but also sometimes the lower house - they often are channelling a voice of the citizen in ways that major parties, and the public service, may have come out of touch with.

"More outreach to a broader range of views in the community will actually help us to do good policy better in environments of greater politically uncertainty and diversity," Ms Leon said.

Ms Leon said the Australian government was keen for the public service to listen to citizens, who ultimately passed judgement on government. She welcomed the elevation of a minister for government services to cabinet, which she said would help develop policies that wouldn't be undermined by their delivery processes.

"[The government] want to know they're meeting the needs, as our prime minister has put it, of the quiet Australians," she said.