Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
that the performance information collected from agencies for the State of the Service
Report would be information that agencies themselves would find useful (Public
Service Bill 1999 – Explanatory Memorandum). Since the introduction of the State
of the Service employee survey in 2003 and the provision of agency-specific results
to large agencies, this purpose of the Report has been enhanced, with agencies increasingly
using their individual reports to benchmark their own performance, identify
areas for improvement and develop appropriate responses.
After eight iterations, the Report has become an integral part of the public service
employment and accountability framework. Similar reports have been adopted, or
are being considered by some of the Australian State and Territory jurisdictions and
considerable international interest has been expressed in the report. The lessons
learned through the experience of preparing the State of the Service Report include
the following:
• A State of the Service Report can form an effective part of the overall accountability
framework in a devolved civil service;
• A strategic approach needs to be taken in determining the issues to be covered
in each year’s report;
• Data needs to be collected from a variety of sources, not just from agency management;
• Engagement with agencies themselves needs to be a priority; and
• Focus should be on continuous improvement.
The State of the Service Report has allowed the government to monitor the effectiveness
of the APS as a whole in an environment where most employment powers are
devolved to the agency level. There has been a continuous focus on improving the
Report, which now utilizes an online agency survey, a representative employee survey,
which includes questions that allow performance to be benchmarked against
State jurisdictions, specific-issue evaluations, and factor analysis of employee survey
results. Large agencies are provided with individual agency-specific employee survey
results that are used in benchmarking performance and identifying areas for improvement.
Smaller agencies are provided with benchmarking reports for their size
bracket. Mechanisms for disseminating results to APS employees have also been
improved over the life of the Report.
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