OPINION
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It would surprise no-one to know that the federal government's reform agenda for the Australian Public Service has been essentially put on ice.
Just weeks ago planning on how to implement the changes was getting into full swing.
The Secretaries Board was sharpening its focus on the agenda, a sub-committee comprising the chief operating officers from across the APS had been formed to help oversee the process and the Australian Public Service Commission was coordinating work being done to bolster the status of human resources functions under the professions model.
Since then the little matter of a worldwide pandemic that has so far infected more than a million people and caused more than 55,000 deaths has drawn attention and resources elsewhere.
The COVID-19 outbreak has upended just about everything.
For years we have been told how valuable and important "disruptors" can be.
But a virus has proven to be the biggest disruptor of all.
Almost overnight the aviation, hospitality and tourism industries have been all-but shut down, police are fining people for gathering on beaches, in parks and even in homes and toilet paper has moved to the top of just about every shopping list.
There have also been extraordinary changes in the way the government works.
The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders are meeting several times a week, Coalition ministers are calling union bosses, regulators are relaxing enforcement of rules and, most stunning of all, the federal government has swung from scraping every penny it can from agency budgets to launching the biggest spending blitz since the Second World War.
A can-do attitude that already got a solid workout during the public service's response to the drought and bushfire crisis has gone into overdrive.
Those in the "virtual room" at the chief operating officers committee meetings remark on the high degree of collegiality on display as departments put up their hands to help one another and share ideas.
Within agencies there are big changes in the way people work. Tens of thousands have left the office and are toiling from home. By the middle of last week, more than 2000 had volunteered to be redeployed to areas of the APS in greatest need.
Thanks to these volunteers and the pool of public servants who had already indicated their readiness to move, the government is well on the way to its goal of drafting an extra 5000 into Services Australia to help meet the surge in demand from millions of people in need of government assistance.
The can-do approach is also manifest in dealings between the government and the private sector.
Businesses and sectors are applauding departments and regulators at all levels for their flexibility and initiative in adapting to this new world, from dropping curfews on delivery trucks to suspending fees and charges.
The world that emerges from the pandemic will be changed, often in ways we cannot yet anticipate.
Some of the current changes will last, some may not, and probably should not.
But already some are hoping that some of the new-found spirit of cooperation and coordination will survive and live on.
Aspects of this were already part of the reforms envisaged by the government, such as the push for greater interaction between the public service and the private sector, including improving the ease with which people can move from one to the other and back again.
The lesson of World War II is that one enduring way to capture and preserve such improvements is to build supporting institutions. At the international level this included establishing the United Nations and the Bretton Woods financial system.
Maybe it is time to use the national cabinet experience to reinvigorate the Council of Australian Governments which, for a time in the 2000s, was a real engine room of reform for the country.
For the APS, maybe it is worth a serious look at Terry Moran's idea - being tested in an outer region of Melbourne - for much closer cooperation and coordination between federal, state and local government agencies and services at the community level.
As economists often admonish, don't let a crisis go to waste.