Vacant space grew in federal public service offices last year as fewer agencies met targets to fit more staff into workplaces, new figures show.
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An annual report on the bureaucracy's office space shows growth in both the number of public servants and offices last year, but a drop in the effective usage of those spaces.
For at least the past six years the Department of Finance has monitored leasing and procurement to increase efficiencies within the government's property portfolio. Property is the Commonwealth's second largest area of spend.
The Finance Department set a target of 14 square metres per work-point (or desk), but the latest Australian Government Office Occupancy Report shows only 29 per cent of the government's 568 eligible tenancies met the target in 2019.
This was a drop from a high of 31 per cent in 2018.
A Finance Department spokesperson said the COVID-19 pandemic was expected to affect these figures in the coming years but that the 14 square metre per desk target remained in place.
Government leases were "encouraged to be managed efficiently towards that target", the spokesperson said.
The Commonwealth increased its controlled office space by about 100,000 square metres to 2,838,345 square metres. It had 3000 more staff and 6000 more work-points in 2019 compared to the previous year.
The staff increase was due to contractors being included in the overall count when they were excluded from the APS Commission count.
There was a spike in vacant work-points of about 3000, meaning that nationally about 15 per cent of desks across public service buildings sat empty.
The spokesperson said the report reflected a point in time, and that figures moved as agencies made decisions about their tenancies.
"In the context of the Commonwealth's total office accommodation, which includes leases that cover short terms (from a few months) to long term (up to 20 or more years), it takes time for changes to impact on average density figures," the spokesperson said.
"Finance anticipates a continued trajectory towards the 14 square metre government target as leases expire and are replaced with more efficient leases."
However, executive director at consulting firm Synergy Australia, Stephen Oxford, said this explanation, that as existing leases expired the figures would improve, was put forward each year.
According to Mr Oxford, the department said in 2014 that 70 per cent of leases would expire in the following five years. It is six years on and the number of tenancies meeting the target has largely remained static.
"[In 2019] there is more space being leased than the year before, there's 3000 more vacant work-points despite those increases in staff numbers, the vacancy rate has gone backwards and density hasn't improved," Mr Oxford said.
A former Finance official, Mr Oxford said he had sympathy for the department in administering leasing policies, as departments and agencies have different accommodation requirements for a range of security or staffing reasons.
While the theory of saving money often clashed with these practicalities, he said Finance's policy was sound but could benefit from a renewed focus rather than a complete reset.
"Agencies could be incentivised to fight to find these efficiencies in their portfolio and the government has levers that it pulls in terms of savings that would create that incentive," Mr Oxford said.
"I doubt there's any appetite to do that in the current [COVID-19] environment but that's what the government has done in the past."
He added that there was an opportunity to achieve better results with improved performance monitoring rather than a yearly snapshot on data collected almost a year before.
The Finance spokesperson said the department expected the COVID-19 pandemic to affect the 2020 office occupancy figures.
"The government recognises that there may need to be changes to office use and occupation to ensure the safety of users through social distancing requirements," the spokesperson said.
"Entities will consider a number of different responses according to their respective requirements, which may include work from home and other flexible solutions, changes to fit-outs, office layout and office use."