Table of Contents
Agency heads have a statutory obligation to promote as well as uphold the APS Values, many of which can be traced back to the Northcote Trevelyan Report of 1854, which established the Westminster tradition of a professional, non-partisan career public service. All portfolio secretaries and heads of some other large agencies are also members of the Management Advisory Committee, which is a statutory body under the Public Service Act. This reflects an obligation on secretaries that goes beyond their management of departments to contribute to improved management practices throughout the APS and to strengthening APS capability.
Secretaries meet this obligation in a number of ways:
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by ensuring their own staff are imbued with the APS Values and identify themselves with a cohesive, highly professional APS
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by participating actively in cross-APS activities such as the MAC and APS Commission forums
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by supporting APS-wide career management and succession management for senior public servants
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by participating in external forums such as the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) and the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA), which foster public service professionalism.
I invested quite heavily in a values-based approach to building cohesion in each of the departments I led, strengthening relationships within and beyond the organisation and promoting ethical behaviour. It was not until I became Public Service Commissioner, however, that I fully appreciated the connection between the values I had been espousing and the APS Values that I had been required by statute to promote. The connection had always been there: indeed, in health, we explicitly referred to the APS Values in our strategic plan as well as the values we were giving particular priority to in pursuing our business objectives, and I do not doubt that staff understood the priority I personally gave to public service professionalism.
Perhaps the most successful initiative was the ‘Fork in the Road Café’ ethics awareness campaign we ran in the Department of Health. It was developed by some very innovative staff, including Andrew Wood and Michelle Kinnane (Table 10.1).
Fork-in-the-Road Cafe hypothetical: Geoffrey Robertson with (visible) Senator Grant Tambling, Professor Don Chalmers, Louise Dodson, David Graham, Peter Sekuless, Dr Barry Catchlove and Andrew Podger (photo by kind permission of the Department of Health and Ageing)
Table 10.1 ‘Fork in the Road Café’
This was the title of the ethics awareness campaign we ran in the Department of Health from 2000. The title reflected the basic lesson: when facing a dilemma, stop (in the café) and reflect, discussing it with respected colleagues and checking guidelines and precedents, before making a decision. All staff attended half-day workshops over about 12 months; subsequently, the program was a compulsory element of induction training for all new staff.
The purpose was to promote the values of public service professionalism in the environment of greater devolution and fewer specific rules. The campaign encouraged discussion of common workplace dilemmas, using a ‘hypothetical’ video commissioned from Geoffrey Robertson (and starring Senator Tambling, various departmental officers, a top journalist and a newspaper editor, an industry lobbyist and a CEO of a private sector chain of health services).
Issues canvassed included conflict of interest, ethical research, working with industry, whistleblowing, post-separation employment, leaking, gifts and entertainment, and non-partisanship.
The campaign later influenced APS Commission programs promoting values and ethics awareness.
The Secretary of the Department of PM&C chaired a monthly portfolio secretaries’ meeting and MAC meetings three or four times a year. He also hosted a two-day retreat each year, held in Sydney since about 1997, at the Reserve Bank facility opposite the Prime Minister’s residence in Kirribilli. The Secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations also chaired a monthly meeting of agency heads to discuss industrial relations issues. The portfolio secretaries’ meetings focused mainly on immediate operational issues requiring coordination throughout the government, often emanating directly from the Prime Minister or cabinet. The retreat focused mainly on some major medium-term policy challenges affecting most portfolios, though the former occasionally addressed some urgent or sensitive management issues (such as running costs and secretaries’ pay and conditions) and the latter also always had one session devoted to management issues (including, in most years, some discussion of SES career management).
The main formal forums for discussing APS-wide management and capability issues are the MAC and the Employment Secretary’s meetings of agency heads (effectively, a workplace relations committee). The MAC projects always progressed under a reference group of interested secretaries, with a project team of deputies. The secretaries’ contribution was sometimes quite substantial in time and intellectual content. The APS Commission also pursues many of its responsibilities for promoting leadership and improved management through informal forums of secretaries, and secretaries also frequently make presentations at APS Commission leadership development programs, particularly those aimed at new SES officers. The APS Commission’s activities, including through the MAC, are described in more detail in Chapter 12.
The Employment Secretary’s workplace relations committee meetings provided an important forum for considering industrial relations issues and also aspects of capability, including attraction and retention of skilled staff and ideas for productivity enhancement. They were not always successful. Under the Howard Government’s industrial relations policies, agency heads ostensibly had far greater flexibility in managing pay and conditions, but the Employment department retained authority to approve enterprise bargaining agreements and also enthusiastically pursued its interpretation of government policy on individual employment contracts (AWAs). The real risk of devolution pushing up wages as agencies competed with each other required not only the discipline of budget constraints but having agency heads exchange information on their proposed enterprise agreements, including productivity offsets. These meetings helped to ensure such information exchange but the ideological direction might have been avoided had the commissioner, or even the Secretary of the Department of PM&C, chaired the meetings (my view remains that the commission should have responsibility for overall guidance on public service pay and conditions).
I was an active participant in all these forums whatever my agency head role. I made a substantial submission to Ron McLeod’s review of the Public Service Act in 1995 when in the Housing department, participated in several of Helen Williams’ reference groups when in the Health department, led or contributed substantially to MAC reviews and APS Commission studies in my role as commissioner (see Chapter 12) and participated actively in the workplace relations committee throughout the Howard Government years.
Tony Ayers promoted the view that in every large department at least one of the deputies should be clearly destined to be a secretary in the future. I accepted this view and always endeavoured to have in at least one of my deputies someone who would gain from the experience in order to help them as a future secretary. They must have won the deputy position on merit, but whenever I had a vacancy I would canvass with the Public Service Commissioner and some fellow secretaries possible candidates for transfer as well as promotion who were serious options as future secretaries and would benefit from experience in my department.
Table 10.2 Grooming secretaries
While some critics have claimed that the frequency of secretary appointments among those with executive experience in the departments of PM&C or Finance reflects power battles in the service, or policy capture by neo-liberals, the truth is that it reflects conscious career planning by individuals and succession management by senior secretaries.
I had the privilege of working in the departments of PM&C and Finance, as well as many other agencies, particularly in the social policy field. Among those I worked with in PM&C in the late 1970s were Ian Castles, David Charles, Michael Codd, John Enfield, Neville Stephens and Ed Visbord. Among those I worked with in finance in the 1980s were Pat Barrett, Tony Blunn, Neil Johnston, Michael Keating, David Rosalky, Steve Sedgwick and Helen Williams.
Following Tony Ayers’ views on the responsibilities of all secretaries to help in the development of future secretaries, I negotiated the transfer of David Borthwick from Treasury to health as one of my deputies with Ted Evans, ensuring he gained experience in an operational agency (and I gained his considerable economic expertise). I had previously promoted Jeff Harmer to join me as a deputy in housing, and later was pleased when Lynelle Briggs joined me in health as a division head on transfer from social security: both were regarded by me as potential future secretaries. (Future secretaries and agency heads Jane Halton and Lisa Paul also worked with me in health and Jeff Whalan in housing, but, while I hope I contributed to their development, they were in those departments when I arrived).
Tony Ayers was also mentor to an extraordinarily wide range of public servants across the whole service. I never matched his achievements in this respect, but I did accept responsibility before and after appointment as a secretary to maintain contact with officers who had worked with me in different agencies. I followed their careers with interest and provided advice if asked on their options for future development and work. These networks also helped me from time to time to understand broader policy debates and service-wide management issues.
Most secretaries also encouraged involvement by their staff in external professional development that reinforced their broader APS role and contribution. As a rule, the President of the ACT Division of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) is a current departmental secretary or agency head. I was president for two years when in the Health department. Secretaries often speak at IPAA forums such as the national conference and noteworthy speeches at these or other forums are regularly published in the IPAA’s journals. In whichever agency I managed, I was a more frequent speaker and author than most.
Michael Wooldridge presenting Andrew Podger (Health Secretary and IPAA ACT President) with the Annual Reports Award for 1997 (photo by kind permission of the Department of Health and Ageing)
Other professional associations that I saw contribute substantially to the broad development of public servants in different agencies included the Economics Society, the Australian Institute of Management, the Australian Human Resources Institute, the Australian Project Management Association and the Australian College of Health Service Executives.
The establishment of the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) in 2004 has provided a stronger base for developing leaders in Australasian jurisdictions. I was a member of the inaugural board, but many other secretaries contributed to the creation of ANZSOG and then to its programs by making regular appearances.