Key chapter findings

Considerable progress has been made in reviewing and rationalising public service- wide governance arrangements and financial and ICT infrastructure to provide improved support to whole of government activities. The Uhrig implementation process and the mapping of formal organisational management arrangements through the Foundations project are both important developments. The Ministerial Taskforce on Indigenous Affairs, together with the National Indigenous Council and the Secretaries’ Group on Indigenous Affairs, represent key governance arrangements linked to a high-level government priority.

Most agencies have been active in providing support and guidance to employees for collaborative activity. On balance, responses to the employee survey provide positive indicators of APS employees’ willingness to focus beyond agency-specific outcomes and priorities and on the Government’s overall policy agenda and priorities. The slight drift downward in cultural indicators since last year might be indicative of a higher standard of awareness of the importance and ramifications of collaboration. Again this year, there was considerable variation between agencies in staff perceptions of the agency’s cultural bias towards whole of government work, suggesting that there is still scope for agency activity in this area.

Those employees who had been involved in structured whole of government activities over the previous 12 months passed mixed judgments on how collaborative and how well supported those structures had been in practice. The effectiveness of collaborative structures could be enhanced by increased clarity and specificity in the upfront setting of shared outcomes and objectives, and a careful articulation of what this means in practical, implementation terms. Employees engaged in collaborative service delivery were much more positive about what had been achieved and what could be achieved. This is an area of increasing focus internationally as well as nationally, and it is particularly pleasing to see these results.

While employees were positive about efforts being made by their own agencies to improve structured whole of government work, they did point to issues associated with legislative constraints on information sharing, resource allocation, assumptions around Ministerial expectations, and some central agency behaviours as imposing constraints on what could otherwise be achieved.

Capability building in whole of government work continues. The Commission is developing broad-based SES training to cover whole of government working, and a number of agencies have redesigned or refocused training objectives specifically to improve employees’ capability in building whole of government activities. Mobility is critical to capability building, and MAC has called upon agencies to participate in strategies to support internal and interdepartmental movement. Rewarding collaborative activity remains an outstanding issue.

Whole of government work is an area in which everyone continues to learn from experience.

go to top of the page