The public service has not been "hollowed out" of skills and expertise, regardless of criticisms that Commonwealth agencies are in decline, Infrastructure Department boss Simon Atkinson has said.
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Mr Atkinson on Thursday also warned against reverting to "lazy competitiveness" within the bureaucracy, saying agencies performed best when they collaborated.
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications secretary, speaking at an Institute of Public Administration event in Canberra, rejected views that the public service had lost capability.
"There's a change in the shape of the public service. I think the public service traditions are here, and the public service is strong," Mr Atkinson said.
"People like to talk us down. I don't."
He said the public service's performance during Covid, including when advising the government, showed it remained in good condition.
"The depth is there. The fact we were able to stand up and give great frank and fearless advice on things we have never experienced before and help steward Australia through it is an example," Mr Atkinson said.
His comments follow criticisms from public administration experts and the main public sector union that expertise has been hollowed out of the bureaucracy, including through staffing caps and over-reliance on consultants and contractors.
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Those views found support in 2019 when the major independent review of the public service said the government's growing use of consultants and contractors had given rise to "credible" concerns that the capabilities of the Australian Public Service were in decline, including a "hollowing out" of strategic policy skills.
Mr Atkinson on Thursday said there was a role for consultants in helping deliver programs. The Infrastructure and Transport Department's work on the International Freight Assistance Mechanism program during Covid showed the private sector could provide expertise that hadn't been previously needed inside the bureaucracy, he said.
"We need to grow our core capabilities but also shape ourselves so we speak enough of the same languages that we access external expertise when we need it.
"You need to know what you do and don't know. You need to know when it's time to phone a friend, and look around and go 'I don't know how to do that, and let's go and ask some people who have done it before'."
Mr Atkinson also warned against silo mentalities in the public service, saying it worked best when it managed its instincts to be competitive, as it had during Covid by deploying staff to help agencies dealing with huge demand.
"We can fall back into what I would call 'lazy competitiveness' where we're not thinking about the outcomes, and we're not thinking about priorities and we're not thinking about the importance of things that other people are delivering. I think we're selling ourselves short when we do that.
"I like a leadership team that can come together and say 'OK, we need to deliver all these things, let's spread our resources in a way that we can all succeed together.
"I don't like the contested idea, particularly around agency resources. I think agencies need to have the resources that they need, in the space of as much as necessary and as little as possible, and be efficient."
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