Rebalancing the APS workforce

Priority actions to rebalance the Australian Public Service workforce are being progressed by the Secretaries Board Future of Work Sub-committee. This includes work to reduce reliance on contractors and consultants, and to attract and retain talent.

This work supports the Australian Government’s reform agenda to ensure the APS is a model employer and has the capability to do its job well. It supports the 2022–23 Budget commitment to achieve savings of $3.6 billion over 4 years, by reducing spending on external labour, advertising, and travel and legal expenses.

The Australian Government values the expertise of the APS and its role in delivering quality advice to the Government and services to the Australian community. To improve the APS’s ability to fulfil this role, various reviews have highlighted a need for the service to reduce its reliance on external labour hire and strengthen its internal capability.

With the APS doing more itself, there will be further opportunities for direct employment and more varied and interesting work opportunities for employees. This will build employee capability and improve the Employee Value Proposition. In turn, this will help with retention and the ability to attract new talent.

The APS Audit of Employment, completed in May 2023, brought together information on the use of external labour by 112 agencies employing staff under the Public Service Act 1999. It found that in 2021–22, these agencies employed an external labour workforce of 53,911 employees (on a full-time equivalent basis) at a cost of $20.8 billion. By way of comparison, the direct employment of public servants in these APS agencies over the same time period was 144,271.

This implies that in 2021–22, the Australian Government workforce (public servants plus external labour) was around 37% larger than the workforce measured by public servant numbers alone.

Activities underway to rebalance the APS workforce include:

an APS Strategic Commissioning Framework to provide principles-based guidance for agencies to support decisions about when to use internal APS resources, or when it may be appropriate to use the external workforce
an in-house consulting capability to provide high-quality management consulting services quickly and at lower cost than external firms, reducing over-reliance on external consultants while strengthening internal APS capabilities
an APS Employee Value Proposition and implementation strategy, to support the attraction and retention of employees.

Rebalancing the workforce will take time, and investment in employee capability will continue to be prioritised. However, in the immediate future, APS workplaces will use the best possible mix of internal and external expertise to deliver in complex operating environments.

The Australian Government is committed to ensuring ongoing capability of the public service by maintaining a strong, responsive and apolitical APS. A reduction in the number of consultants and contractors, and the strengthening of APS capability are part of this commitment.

Rebalancing the APS workforce

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