Phil Gaetjens has been replaced as head of PM&C by Glynn Davis, while in a major machinery of government overhaul, two new departments are to be established and other agencies are being shuffled.

There are more changes coming as they are worked through in an "orderly and respectful" way, but Mr Albanese told The Canberra Times in an exclusive interview that Home Affairs head Mike Pezzullo "has a lot to offer and he'll certainly have an ongoing role as a respected public servant".

For the public service in general, "it will be back, front and centre in offering advice to the government rather than sidelines. And I think that is very important".

The new Albanese ministry has been busy addressing departmental staff and getting briefings.

It is clearly more than just a fresh tone for the new Prime Minister. Mr Albanese wants to operate government differently. In a 2019 speech widely seen as diminishing the role of the public service, the then-prime minister Scott Morrison said the bureaucracy was not there to set policy, that's the role of government.

The new Prime Minister wants the good, the bad and the ideas.

"The bureaucracy is there to give policy advice to come up with ideas. It's up to government to make the decisions based upon that advice," Mr Albanese said.

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"Public servants advise, governments make decisions, but that should be informed by proper advice. And that is critical.

"I want the best and brightest in Australia to feel and to then actualise going into the public service as playing a role, including in policy development and ideas for the national interest, not to just shuffled paper."

His comments come shortly after new Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek called on public servants to give her bad news directly, challenge her with constructive criticism, but to be "all in" after government decisions, saying their work was too important to be done "half-heartedly".

In a letter to her new department, the senior Labor minister sought the department's "help and expertise" but also warned public servants against aimlessly shifting around paperwork and urged them to take on a sense of urgency in delivering the government's policies.

Calling her letter "something like an instruction manual for working with your new minister", she said the Albanese government would set out its goals in a charter letter in coming weeks, and require measurable progress by the end of its first term.

"To get there, we will develop a detailed set of real-world measures to track our progress. Shifting around paperwork is not success," Ms Plibersek wrote.

"Success is achieving something real every day for the Australian people. This will require a sense of urgency. It will require all of us to work at the peak of our capacities.