What is the vision for the public sector and employment in the next two to three decades? Dr Peter Shergold, as Secretary, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, undertook a ‘forecast’ in a speech entitled ‘The Australian Public Service in 2035: Back to The Future’[13] in which he made a number or predictions about the Australian Public Service. These included:
The decline in the size of the public services would continue. He predicted the APS would decline to a workforce of about 100,000 employees in 2035.
Innovations in technology would enable more to be done with less.
The development of ‘a blended, multi-dimensional workforce’ in which full-time and part-time employees would work with contract providers and consultants ‘bound together by the work they do, not their working conditions’.[14]
The problem of relativity of pay between the private and public sectors would remain. The Australian Public Service Commissioner, Lynelle Briggs, has also referred to ‘the generally lower level of remuneration of APS staff compared with equivalent staff in the private sector’.[15]
Women would represent approximately 75 per cent of the APS - and would be represented across all levels of the service.
The career public service would remain.
All APS employees would be graduates. In Shergold’s words:
“Managing an all-graduate service will present new challenges. The process of dismantling hierarchy as the basis of authority will have continued, driven by similarities in the education level of the workforce, workplace aspirations, flat job structures and communications technology. Employees will all, in a real sense, be managers — managing knowledge, contracts and projects to develop and deliver policy for the government of the day. They will all be expected to behave as leaders.”[16]
The influence of technology will be uncertain and difficult to envisage. However, Shergold stated:
“I do not think it will all be for the better. Dealing with the wicked complexity of public policy will be as slow and difficult as ever but the flow of information and responses to it will be ever more immediate … Governments and their public services will find it increasingly difficult to meet the expectations of citizens as to what government action can achieve and how quickly …The job of public servants to identify and promote a national interest may have become even more challenging.[Emphasis added]”[17]
Some things will remain largely unchanged, in his view. For example, the nature of the public service itself — he was of the view that the merit-based and apolitical public service envisaged by Stafford Northcote and Charles Trevalyan, as discussed in Chapter 3 of this volume, would remain of relevance well into the twenty-first century.[18] Moreover, Dr Shergold said, ‘The civil service that they sought, existing as an institution in its own right within the executive arm of government, will have survived’.[19]
The Australian Public Service Commissioner, however, noted that decisions would need to be made about the balance between in-house and external work. In her words:
As public servants, we need to identify where collaborations with external stakeholders will add the most value and where work should be done in house. We also need to think about how we can try to loosen some of our controls and guidelines to facilitate more flexibility, innovation and effectiveness on the ground, while retaining high standards of accountability. The more we reduce unnecessary red tape, the better our arrangements will be for everyone.[20]
Perhaps it is fitting to conclude with the predictions of Dr Peter Shergold:
A professional administrative class, willing and able to serve successive governments in a non-partisan manner, accountable through ministers for ensuring that decisions are taken and implemented in a lawful manner and responsive to the directions set by elected government — these, I suggest, are values which will retain their virtue in the decades ahead.[21]