COVID-19 has shown the need for public servants to be adaptable and ready to take on new tasks, the Tax Office's boss has said.
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Australian Taxation Office commissioner Chris Jordan said the agency's staff had left their egos at the door and gone beyond their comfort zones while delivering the government's economic response to the pandemic.
Mr Jordan, speaking to the Institute of Public Administration Australia's podcast Work with Purpose on Monday, said the ATO's workforce had responded to the crisis with a whole-of-agency effort.
The ATO's task delivering the government's JobKeeper wage subsidy package, early release of superannuation and measures to support businesses had involved people working "extraordinary hours" seven days a week, he said.
Before the pandemic, the agency undertook a "reinvention" project throwing out thousands of pages in bureaucratic checklists and instructions, Mr Jordan said.
Instead, the agency let staff use their own judgments, education and training in making decisions.
"What has happened now has exactly pushed that as a notion, right across the public service, we have to be adaptable," Mr Jordan said.
The ATO redeployed 5000 staff internally to the most important tasks of the COVID-19 economic response, had up to 15,000 public servants working from home, and trained 2000 casuals to help deliver the government's stimulus measures.
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"This is just inconceivable in the past," the commissioner said.
Three different arms of the ATO - including the IT, service delivery and client engagement groups - had come together in responding to the pandemic, he said.
"There was everyone left their egos at the door, and there was an absolute knowledge that this was a whole of ATO," Mr Jordan said.
"Our reinvention program allowed us to be able to do this, to give us the flexibility, to give us the cultural attributes that people needed to be able to say, 'Yes, I know I'm part of a team, I'm willing to do something that I've never done before. I'm willing to get out of my comfort zone, because I know it's for the benefit of the one ATO'."
Newer systems such as single touch payroll had also prepared the Tax Office for its task during the pandemic and created an in-built compliance check in administering the JobKeeper scheme, the agency's commissioner said.
Mr Jordan, who started the role in 2013 and whose term expires in 2024, said he was warned as he started at the ATO there would be internal resistance to changes.
Instead, staff had been glad to discard checklists.
"People would say to me, thank goodness we have been given an opportunity, to make a judgment and make a decision, and get on with what we really know what we need to do."