Into the future: the next twenty-five years

The Prime Minister has publicly acknowledged the strength and professionalism of the APS and its record of serving ‘successive governments very well’ but suggested that contemporary challenges ‘…require a new generation of public service leadership, a new standard of public service excellence and therefore a new era of public service reform’.³¹

In doing so, the Prime Minister has suggested that positioning the APS to meet today’s and future challenges requires continuing reform, as opposed to revolution, and has agreed with his departmental secretary’s observation that ‘the APS is not broken—it is not a renovator’s opportunity’.³² So reforming and reinvigorating the APS is once again a government priority.

The Advisory Group on Reform of Government Administration discussion paper—Reform of Australian Government Administration—provides the APS leadership with an opportunity to build on the traditional public sector strengths—apolitical, impartial, fair, and accountable—to ensure that the APS is well positioned for the future. The discussion paper identifies a number of related issues for the APS, including:

• high quality, forward looking and creative policy advice;
• flexibility and agility; and
• high quality, effective programs and services focused on the needs of citizens.

It is critical that the leadership cadre becomes future focussed. Development of innovative responses to both short term and long term policy and program delivery challenges will require the APS to rebuild and strengthen its strategic policy capabilities.

Agility must also become a core leadership capability in our decentralised and complex world if the APS is to meet the Prime Minister’s mandate that the APS leadership group becomes innovative, thinks big and takes account of the future.

The discussion paper defines agility as ‘having the capacity to understand and meet the public’s needs in the short term, adapt to trends and issues in the medium term, and shape public needs over the long term’.³³ It links agility and flexibility back to the three recurring key attributes:

• mobility—to ensure that the APS has the right skills, ideas and experience, and the ability to deploy resources to high priority areas;
• continuous improvement—to doing things better; and
• a one APS culture—to foster and enhance cross agency collaboration.

A one APS culture requires the leadership cadre to place greater emphasis on collaboration with partners—both from within and outside of the public sector as contemporary issues and those in the future are likely to cut across the boundaries of public, private and community sector organisations.

These challenges mean that the SES will need to reassess the way in which the APS works and problem solves. The MAC innovation discussion paper³⁴ describes this shift as systemic innovation, or new and improved ways for the public sector to operate and interact with stakeholders.

The responses to a recent Commission survey of all current SES demonstrate that the leadership group is aware of the directions being set for the APS by Government and is very positively disposed towards them.

The challenge for the SES therefore is to continue building on the strong foundation the last 25 years of public sector reform has delivered for future generations of public sector leaders. Each new generation of leaders will need to make a similar investment to ensure that in future the APS is well positioned to face new sets of issues 25 years or more from now.

 

Next: Conclusion