Foreword

The Australian Public Service Statistical Bulletin 2008–09 presents a summary of employment under the Public Service Act 1999 at 30 June 2009 and during the 2008–09 financial year, as well as summary data for the past 15 years.

The data shows how the composition of the Australian Public Service (APS) has changed over time, and provides an opportunity for assessing the impact of changing capability requirements and human resource (HR) policies on the structure of the APS. A more comprehensive statistical analysis of the APS is provided in the State of the Service Report 2008–09.

The main data source on APS employees is the APS Employment Database (APSED), which contains data extracted from agencies’ HR systems. The Australian Public Service Commission continues to work with agencies to improve the quality and timeliness of the data they provide to APSED. To ensure that sound conclusions can be drawn from the data, it is important that agencies assign a high priority to providing accurate and timely data to the Commission.

 

Carmel McGregor
Acting Public Service Commissioner

November 2009

Introduction

The Australian Public Service Statistical Bulletin 2008–09 is a statistical overview of APS staffing produced on a financial year basis, as part of the State of the Service series. It provides details of staff employed under the authority of the Public Service Act 1999 (the PS Act). Staff employed in Commonwealth-owned companies, statutory authorities, the Australian Defence Force and government business enterprises who are not employed under the PS Act are not included. State and local government staff are also not included.

The ‘Main Features’ section provides an overview of the report, together with a number of tables and graphs. Later sections cover ongoing and non–ongoing staff in more detail.

Source of data

From July 1999, APSED replaced the Continuous Record of Personnel (CRP) as the source for APS employment statistics. Data held on the CRP was migrated to APSED to form the historical series for ongoing employees.

APSED records information for both ongoing and non-ongoing employees (the CRP held data only for ongoing employees), including staff on leave without pay and other unpaid inoperative staff. Agencies provide data from their HR systems to the Commission on staff movements such as engagements, promotions and separations, as well as a ‘snapshot’ for all staff at 31 January and 30 June each year. This information is used to verify and, where necessary, update APSED data. Although the Commission has tried to ensure data integrity and has undertaken an extensive audit of data provided by agencies, it cannot accept responsibility for inaccuracies in the data supplied.

When referring to the data in this publication, or making comparisons with previous Bulletins, the reader should be aware that there have been changes over time to the conceptual definitions which support the data. Differences in data definitions due to the migration of CRP to APSED are explained briefly below and in detail in the Explanatory Notes at Appendix 1.

About the data

A headcount approach underpins the Bulletin—that is, people working part-time are aggregated with people working full-time without weighting.

Time series data reflects the APS as it was at a particular point in time. When comparing trends over time, the data may vary due to coverage changes within the PS Act. For example, in 1999 the Parliamentary agencies ceased to be covered by the PS Act and in 2008–09 the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) moved into coverage of the PS Act. Administrative changes affecting APS numbers are detailed in Appendixes 4 and 5.

Due to differences in data sources and data definitions, there may be variations between data in this publication and that published by individual agencies.

Where proportions are presented, results have been rounded to the first decimal place. Due to this rounding, the percentage results for some tables may not add up exactly to the total shown.

Data for the Senior Executive Service (SES) includes employees grouped with the equivalent SES bands under the Public Service Classification Rules 2000.

Data includes inoperative staff, unless indicated.

Each year, extensive audits and error checking of APSED are undertaken and errors in the historical data are corrected. The following points, therefore, should be taken into consideration when making comparisons between data in this publication and previous publications.

• Previously published data for both ongoing and non-ongoing staff may have been revised and therefore may not necessarily be comparable with that in previous years’ publications.
• Following the introduction of the broadbanding of classifications in 1999, data in this publication reports the maximum classification level, unless agencies provide data at specific levels. As a result, some employees are reported at the top of their broadband, even though they may be at a lower classification in the broadband. Significant improvements in the quality of data provided by agencies in recent years have resulted in fewer agencies reporting broadbanded classifications. For example, at June 2003 over 31,000 employees had a different maximum and minimum classification. By June 2009 this figure had dropped to 2,061. See Appendix 2 ‘Effects on data of broadbanding classifications’.
• APSED data reports the actual classification of staff and includes temporary assignments to a different level. Previously, CRP data referred only to substantive classification.
• As part of the process for loading data from the CRP onto APSED, an audit was undertaken of employees who were current at June 1999. A number of records were found where non-ongoing employees had been recorded as ongoing on the CRP. This led to a recalculation of ongoing employee numbers in the years preceding 1999. Only those employees who were employed at June 1999 were able to be included in this audit. Those who had been employed in earlier years but who had since left were not included. It can be assumed that there was an overestimate, which cannot be quantified, of ongoing employees in those years.
• EEO data published by the Commission may differ from that published by some agencies. In 2001, an independent review was undertaken of the Commission’s then current practice of retrospectively changing a person’s EEO status if it changed during their employment. The review supported the continuation of the practice for reporting for non-English speaking background (NESB) and Indigenous status as these characteristics are likely to be constant throughout an employee’s career. Disability, however, may change with time and APSED has been modified to record the status change for an individual and the date at which that change was loaded into APSED.
• The provision of some EEO data by APS employees to their agency is voluntary. Therefore, as with any large voluntary data collection, APSED tends to under-represent the number of Indigenous Australians, people with disability and NESB employees.
• This report covers the APS at 30 June 2009. Since that date, there have been adjustments to the Administrative Arrangements Order; these are not reflected here because they occurred after 30 June 2009. They will be reported in the 2010 publication.

The APSED Internet Interface (APSEDII)

APSEDII provides user friendly, internet based access to APSED data. The interface facilitates workforce planning and benchmarking by allowing users to produce tables similar to those published in this Bulletin. Users can run queries to provide Bulletin-style tables with data about an organisation and, for comparative purposes, about other agencies in that size grouping.

The interface produces charts and tables and also allows users to download the queried results and manipulate the data further in other applications such as Excel. For example, a small agency might be interested to see how its classification distribution by sex compares to other small agencies or it might be interested in comparing its classification by age profile to other agencies. The interface allows the user to make the appropriate selections on the web page then run the query and save the results in an import format for later manipulation.

Agencies can also use a secure link to drill down into data for their own agency at a level of detail not available in Commission publications. This feature assists agencies in accessing useful data for workforce planning. For further information about APSEDII, please email apsedii@apsc.gov.au.

APSEDII is available at <https://www.apsedii.gov.au>

APSED services

The Commission can also provide disaggregations and analyses of the data presented here, in formats other than those published, on a fee for service basis.

Enquiries or suggestions about this Bulletin, or the analyses and other services we provide, are welcome and should be directed to:

Sue Johnson (02 6202 3579) or Tracey Quinn (02 6202 3710) or email apsed@apsc.gov.au

Production team

APSED director: Sue Johnson

APSED manager: David Judge

APSED maintenance: Christopher Giuliano, Kellie Worth, Marie-Therese Boroczky, Ray Maher, Stephen Burden, Tracey Quinn

APS Statistical Bulletin preparation: Tracey Quinn

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