Mark Evans, (2018), Australian Public Service Reform: Learning from the past and building for the fu

Submission to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Independent Review of the Australian Public Service Prepared by Professor Mark Evans with a foreword by IPAA National President, Former Secretary of the Department of the Professor Peter Shergold AC Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, who chaired the Ahead of the Game inquiry. [...] And the third exception is the 1997 Commonwealth Services Delivery Agency Act which led to the creation of Centrelink and the establishment of the concept of the “one-stop shop”, alongside on-line tax receipt, the APS’s most emulated reform internationally (see: Evans, 2004&9 and Halligan and Wills, 2008). [...] The 2010 Reform of Australian Government Administration (or Ahead of the Game as it became known) identified four key problems: loss of public service capability in the Howard Years; the need to recruit the best and the brightest to bridge the capability deficit; and, the need for greater organisational agility and enhanced strategic policy capability. [...] 22 A raft of reforms followed such as the establishment of capability reviews, the creation of the APS 200 (a talent management strategy), the launch of the National Institute of Public Policy and the Design Centre at the ANU. [...] Examples include the political appointment of Departmental Secretaries, the end of the notion of permanent Secretaries, the bypassing of departmental advisory systems, and the growth in the size and influence of political offices and the role of political staffers.