Under new public management in the 1980s and 1990s, devolution was accompanied by substantial networking, through the Management Advisory Board and its Management Improvement Advisory Committee and other informal groups, to promote improved financial management and, subsequently, broader management. Financial management capability within and across agencies improved significantly, even if people-management improvements lagged somewhat. Enthusiasm for this concerted APS-wide learning waned in the late 1990s as devolution was pressed further and the Secretary of the Department of PM&C showed less interest in the subject. The Finance department, too, withdrew from its former leadership position and the APS Commission struggled a little to gain support in the absence of other central agency leadership.

Nonetheless, my strong impression is that, despite some ups and downs, agencies’ investment in training their own staff increased substantially during the 1990s.

More recently, the issue of public service capability has been reinvigorated not only in the APS but in other Australasian jurisdictions, most obviously through the establishment of ANZSOG. This began in the Howard Government years, with Moore-Wilton lending his support to Victoria’s suggestion to establish ANZSOG and with Shergold and Ian Watt pressing the capability agenda further as they took up their roles as head of the departments of PM&C and Finance respectively, supporting the Public Service Commissioner’s advocacy.

This renewed interest was the result not only of recognition that the previous focus on individual agencies alone was sometimes counterproductive as agencies competed with each other in a tightening labour market and was also constraining capacity to deliver whole-of-government initiatives. It also reflected a growing realisation that greater workforce mobility, an ageing workforce and increasingly complex demands on managers required a different approach to capability building than the traditional ‘apprenticeship’-type model in which public servants learned through osmosis on the job at the feet of their elders. Instead, public services need to invest more in continuing formal learning covering technical, management and leadership skills, and cross-agency and cross-jurisdiction learning and networking are essential.

This new emphasis is not replacing the investment by each agency in its own capability building; it is complementing and reinforcing that investment. Across public services, I am sure investment in capability building is now substantially higher than in the 1980s and early 1990s, within agencies and service-wide.