APSED and the quality of EEO data

The provision of EEO data by APS employees to their agency is voluntary. Therefore, as with any large voluntary data collection, APSED tends to under-represent the actual number of employees in those groups.

Last year’s employee survey results showed that 10% of those employees who were offered the opportunity to provide EEO data actively chose not to do so. Yet, of the data supplied to APSED at 30 June 2005, only one-third of employees actually had comprehensive EEO data: Indigenous status was provided for only 48% of employees, while data on disability was provided for 47%. The quality of data on race or ethnicity was somewhat better. There was no improvement on last year but there has been a slight improvement on data provided in 2003.

To ensure robust analysis, it is important that agencies place a strong emphasis on encouraging employees to provide complete data where possible, as well as ensuring that HR systems can effectively capture this information and report it accurately to APSED.

Employees for whom no data is available are included in the population for calculating percentages. Therefore, the percentages provided on representation of EEO groups in the APS may under-estimate the actual proportions in agency and APS populations.

In examining diversity, available data from State jurisdictions (WA, SA, Vic) was analysed to gauge the views of APS employees compared to those in State public sectors. However, caution is required with these comparisons because of methodological differences. The WA data is only representative of the views of employees in two WA departments; the Victorian and SA surveys were conducted in 2004; and there were differences in the wording of some questions in the SA survey.⁴ Over time, as the number of jurisdictions participating and the number of comparable data items increases, and the comparability of the data improves, it is envisaged that benchmarking will become more indicative.

4 The data for WA for 2004–05 represents two non-metropolitan Departments of Education and two non-metropolitan Departments of Health. This is not representative of the WA jurisdiction for comparative purposes. The SA survey was conducted in September 2004 across public sector agencies employing people under the Public Sector Management Act 1995. The SA data is reported as a percentage of respondents who answered the questions, with the exception of responses to questions where respondents were given multiple options to respond to and allowed to make more than one response.

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