12. Inside or outside the tent: the role of the Public Service Commissioner

When I was appointed commissioner, my predecessor, Helen Williams, had issued the directions required under the new legislation on the APS Values and Code of Conduct. These, appropriately in my view, clarified the responsibilities of agency heads while leaving them some room to manage how they would promote the values and ensure the code was upheld. My focus was on developing guidelines to help agency heads and their employees to apply the values and Code of Conduct in their practical work situations.

My earlier, practical experience as a departmental secretary made me somewhat sceptical of some of the rhetoric of the management literature and the fads and fashions involved in management theory. I therefore put considerable emphasis on what I called ‘hardwiring’, whether of the APS Values or of the concept of leadership, both of which were emphasised in the Public Service Act 1999.

So, for example, I grouped the 15 values in the act under four headings, which identified public servants’ key relationships and behaviours, and clarified how the values reflected the unique role of the Public Service under the Westminster system (for example, responsive to the elected government, non-partisan, impartial, merit based). This grouping of the values guided the structure of the State of the Service Reports from 2002 and the rewriting of the Guidelines on Official Conduct in 2003. Using OECD experience, we also identified how agency heads could go about ‘embedding’ the values in their organisations in practical ways through ‘commitment’, ‘management’ and ‘assurance’ activities. This led to the following diagram (Figure 12.1) to illustrate the practical approach we were advocating and the guidelines we prepared for agency heads on embedding the values in their organisations.

Figure 12.1 The APS Values framework

This work recognised the different business responsibilities of agencies and how these might reflect differences in priorities among the APS Values (for example, Centrelink might give more weight to values concerning the relationship its staff have with the public while the Department of PM&C might give more weight to values concerning the relationship its staff has with the government and the Parliament), but confirmed the unifying role and relevance of the full set of APS Values.

Similarly, I was becoming uneasy about the language of ‘leadership’. The SES Leadership Capability Framework had proven to be very robust, with richness in its detail and language, but there was a push to apply the framework to everyone at every level. I felt this ran the danger of making it meaningless. We therefore did some extensive research into the skills and attributes that were really required at different levels, recognising that there could be wide disparities for different jobs in different businesses. I was also concerned not to understate the importance of technical expertise or the specific skills required of managers at different levels. The ensuing Integrated Leadership System (ILS), released in 2004, gained considerable credibility throughout the Public Service precisely because of this practical balance, as illustrated by Figure 12.2, which appeared near the beginning of the ILS documentation.

Figure 12.2 The changing mix of skills and capabilities

The ILS led to a substantial refreshment of our suite of APS Commission development programs, though these continued to focus mostly on the SES and the feeder groups into the SES.

My personal involvement in these was extensive, both in the design and in their delivery. I attended all the courses for new SES officers, which were held three or four times a year, to discuss the statutory obligations of SES officers in promoting and upholding the APS Values and in working throughout the APS—not just within their own agencies. Often I would raise common ethical dilemmas and encourage discussion of how they might be handled. I also attended many of the other leadership programs managed by the commission or run by agencies for their own staff.

A particularly useful program was the Career Assessment Centre for staff at EL2 level considered likely to be promoted to the SES in the future. The value of this program for those participating and their agencies was in its direct assessment, without pulling punches. An added value for the commission was the capacity to collate the assessments and to build a picture of common strengths and weaknesses and trends over time, to help in the design of future development activities. This analysis showed that most of these high-flying staffers were skilled in communication and demonstrated personal commitment and integrity, but many were weak in shaping strategic thinking and maintaining productive working relations.

Our APS Commission guidelines were prepared through an extensive process of consultation with agencies, mostly using a reference group of secretaries and drawing on APS-wide case studies. MAC reports similarly used reference groups and case studies, but also employed a team of deputy secretaries to pull the material together. This had the added virtue of allowing secretaries to see close at hand deputy secretaries from other agencies who might be candidates for advancement in the future, thus contributing to succession management.

I was always closely involved in the MAC projects as the commissioner was the ‘executive officer’ of the MAC under the Public Service Act. I initiated some projects, prepared papers for the MAC on the scope of each one and was on every reference group of secretaries.

Those that I contributed most to were the 2002 report Organisational Renewal, on the likely demographic impact on the APS and the need for improved workforce planning, and the 2004 report Connected Government, on the management of whole-of-government policies and projects. I had previously contributed substantially to the 2001 report Performance Management in the APS: A strategic framework.

The main avenue for evaluating and reporting on how agencies are upholding the values is the commissioner’s yearly State of the Service Report. Helen Williams prepared the first two reports required under the legislation, developing an initial framework and infrastructure including a detailed survey of agencies. I built on this using the grouping of the APS Values I had proposed to clarify the main areas of performance I wished to focus on (relations with ministers and the government, relations with the public, workplace relations and personal behaviour) and adding a weighted random sample survey of APS employees to complement (and test) the survey of agencies.

Together with the commission’s own database, which tracked all APS employees, this provided an increasingly comprehensive evidence base to support judgments on performance against the APS Values and on APS capability. In my last report in 2004, I also introduced some information on the views of the public collected by some agencies through their own feedback mechanisms.

The surveys covered sensitive issues such as relations between public servants and ministers and their advisers, and public servants’ confidence in upholding the APS Values in this area. The data were fascinating, but caused considerable angst among my colleagues.

While the quality of the reports, and of their underpinning data and analysis, was improving, I was nonetheless cautious about identifying the agencies whose performance was weak. I felt I needed to build our reputation for credible analysis before taking the step of ‘naming and shaming’. Instead, I named examples of good practice and provided agency heads with data on their agencies compared with the overall data so they could see where they were or were not performing well and consider whether action was needed to address weaknesses.

The commissioner has no statutory role in the appointment of secretaries and agency heads, other than in the case of the Secretary of the Department of PM&C. I did, however, contribute to succession management by the Secretary of PM&C by providing a database on potential candidates and on each agency head position (extending the process developed by Williams). The data were based largely on interviews I held each year with secretaries about their deputies and equivalent, and about other SES officers seen as ‘high fliers’, and data the secretaries subsequently provided on their experience and strengths and suggestions for future development. I also encouraged confidential discussion at the portfolio secretaries’ retreats of the capabilities of deputies and equivalent under protocols that required firsthand evidence to support any view expressed. These discussions were critical, as they facilitated moderation of the claims of each secretary about his or her own staff (and they did reveal some very different assessments of some staff). As commissioner, I generally added my own comments to the information base held in the commission, drawing in part on these conversations.

Secretaries quite often contacted me for suggestions about people they might encourage to apply for senior vacancies, accepting that my advice would reflect my interests in broader capability building throughout the Public Service and not only my views on likely strong candidates for the specific vacancies concerned.

Occasionally, the Secretary of the Department of PM&C and the commissioner took a highly proactive stance on succession management, setting up a committee of secretaries to advise on possible rotations of deputies to help their development. This did not happen while I was commissioner and earlier exercises had mixed success, with secretaries suspicious that individuals offered for transfer might not be high-performing ones and that those secretaries pursuing others’ deputies might be motivated by self-interest rather than the broader interests of the APS.