ANALYSIS
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The year began with a sense of change in the air, the promise of a new direction for the public service, and a political party readying to remake the bureaucracy.
It ends with all these. The change, new direction, and political party just look far different.
The spectacular re-election of the Coalition government in May wasn't only the most significant event in the life of the Australian Public Service in 2019.
It also transformed the agenda for public service reform that loomed beforehand.
Labor and the independent Thodey review of the bureaucracy were the agents hinting at change at the start of 2019. One failed. The other, whatever its merits, flopped.
Each end the year with their promise for change unfulfilled. Labor is soul searching. The Thodey report sits at the sideline, few of its recommendations fully accepted by the Coalition, while other reforms loom for the federal bureaucracy.
How would a Shorten government have received the Thodey report on the public service?
Labor would have likely embraced at least two of the review's recommendations. An end to the staffing cap, and a move towards common pay scales and conditions for bureaucrats, were actually ALP policies going into the federal election.
Public servants begin their summer breaks instead with the spectre of job cuts and departmental mergers waiting at the other side of the Christmas shutdown.
The staffing cap will stay. So will the efficiency dividend, and agency-level enterprise bargaining.
For all the unpopular measures that will remain, it's the coming changes that bear the real potential sting for public servants.
In 2020 the government will embark on the largest cuts to department numbers in more than 30 years, despite calls to rein in disruptive machinery of government changes.
The federal bureaucracy looks set to shrink further while more public servants lose jobs, as mid-year budget papers suggest.
Public servants have the dubious gifts of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's close attention and high expectations.
Government service delivery became one of the first items on the agenda of a prime minister who has interpreted his surprise election win as a personal imprimatur.
He means to use it by stamping his intentions on the bureaucracy, overhauling the public service's shape and senior leaders.
Doing, not thinking
Mr Morrison's reduction in department numbers will have secretaries reporting to multiple ministers, overseeing larger workforces and balancing the demands of more portfolios.
It's a rebalancing of influence even further away from senior public servants and towards the government.
If there was any lingering doubt the government was in charge, it made this clear in its response to the Thodey review.
Public servants have the dubious gifts of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's close attention and high expectations.
Proposals to make it harder for politicians to appoint and sack department secretaries and agency heads got short shrift.
Couple this with job cuts and a likely increase in contractor spending, and it appears the Morrison government has seized more control over the business of governing at the expense of its bureaucracy.
As the Prime Minister said in July, this is what he wants to see the public service working at: "implementation, implementation, doing".
Mr Morrison wants it to think less for the government, and "do" more.
He's installed to the highest levels of the bureaucracy people with whom he's reportedly forged tight relationships. Phil Gaetjens was facing a departure from Treasury under a Labor government; he now leads the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, in charge of seeing through Mr Morrison's plans in the public service.
His favoured vehicle to wield influence is the Secretaries Board he chairs. Its status has been elevated to become an engine of change, converting the government's ideas into concrete action.
In many cases the details are yet to be thrashed out, but the direction is rapidly coming into focus.
The cut in the number of departments from 18 to 14, and the removal of five department secretaries is only the start of the process, not the end.
The prime minister wants the public service to simultaneously improve the quality of its services, be more open to outside ideas, break down internal silos and barriers, continuously review and evaluate what it does, embrace digital capabilities, adopt "more dynamic" work practices and redouble efforts to ensure it acts with integrity.
Above all, Mr Morrison wants the APS to have "a clear line of sight" to the people it serves.
The public service is expected to achieve all this while digesting department cuts and mergers.
The role of the Secretaries Board will be critical.
Over the next three months it will be engaged in a three-month "sprint" to work out how to turn these ideas and principles into action.
It is not starting with a blank sheet.
In his response to the Thodey review, Mr Morrison has already put a swag of items on the to-do list, while crossing several others out.
In the coming year the government wants the Secretaries Board to:
- develop an APS-wide workforce strategy;
- review the performance of departments, agencies and senior executive staff;
- build digital and data expertise across the APS;
- improve and integrate services;
- undertake an urgent audit of IT;
- come up with ideas to improve recruitment; and
- boost the APS's ability to give quality advice.
This is all on top of the day job.
Experienced observers think a lot of the proposed changes make sense, but pulling them off successfully will not be easy.
And the task is not helped by the tight financial constraints the public service is working under.
Increasingly, departments and agencies are being forced to make tough resourcing decisions or turn to creative revenue raising measures to meet ever-growing demand for their services.
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Fresh from forecasting its first budget surplus (a wafer-thin $5 billion expected this financial year) the government has shown it is in no mood to relax its firm grip on APS spending.
The mantra of doing more with less is not going away any time soon.
To keep on delivering their services and carrying out their functions, departments and agencies are leaning increasingly heavily on the private sector. Spending on consultants and contractors has boomed since 2012-13, bursting above $1.2 billion in 2016-17.
While drawing on external expertise is not necessarily a bad thing, in his review, panel chairman David Thodey warned it is showing signs of getting out of balance, with the APS increasingly turning to outside help to deliver on core functions.
He thinks the biggest casualty may be the public service's ability to provide critical policy input and strategic advice.
For a prime minster who wants a bureaucracy focused above all on service delivery, that may be the point.