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PO Box 457
CANBERRA ACT 2601
dta.gov.au

Introduction

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission to the Independent Panel for the APS
Hierarchy and Classification Review.

The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) leads digital transformation in Government to make
services simple, clear and fast.

One of the priorities under the Government’s Digital Transformation Strategy 2018-20251
(DTS) is to create 'a government that’s fit for the digital age'. A review of the DTS is currently
underway and will consider many of the issues highlighted in 2020 including the need for
data and digital capabilities that can enable the government to respond quickly, and the need
for flexibility, mobility and collaboration, across government and stakeholders, to ensure the
effective and timely delivery of services and outcomes.

The Independent Review of the Australian Public Service2 (APS Review) and the APS
Workforce Strategy 20253 also seek to continue the progression of contemporary ways of
working more broadly across the Australian Public Service. The DTA supports these efforts,
including the APS Hierarchy and Classification Review.

While there is no one-size fits all approach to managing public service organisations, this
submission argues that much more needs to be done, including structurally to help support a
modern, agile and responsive Australian Public Service.

1
Digital Transformation Strategy 2018–2025, 2018, Digital Transformation Agency. https://www.dta.gov.au/digital-
transformation-strategy/digital-transformation-strategy-2018-2025
2 Commonwealth of Australia, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2019, Our Public Service Our

Future, Independent Review of the Australian Public Service
https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/independent-review-aps.pdf
3
Commonwealth of Australia, APSC, 2021, Delivering for Tomorrow: APS Workforce Strategy 2025
https://www.apsc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-03/APS_Workforce_strategy.pdf

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The Digital Profession

With the launch of the APS Digital Professional Stream Strategy4 (DPS Strategy) in April 2020
the Digital Profession was established to increase the digital capability of the APS. As
highlighted in the DPS Strategy, the Government has made significant progress in its digital
journey over the past decade.

However, the ability to attract, develop, manage and retain talent is significantly impacted by
the rapid growth of national and global demand for digital talent and the inability for current
talent pipelines to meet this demand. Academic research shows that it is increasingly more
challenging to compete in an open market with a significant number of drivers factoring into
candidates’ employment considerations, including but not limited to: remuneration, status
and respect, empowerment and authority, organisational structures, recognition and skills
utilisation, and deeper social considerations such as diversity, inclusion and alignment to
organisational missions and values.

While providing the below recommendations it is critical to note that the adoption and
success of the outcomes of this Review will rely heavily on cultural change and a significant
mindset shift to embrace new ways of operating, a greater acceptance of risk to deliver
innovation and a focus on adaptive decision-making that delivers the best outcomes through
the most appropriate decision-making approach.

4
APS Digital Professional Stream Strategy, 2020, Digital Transformation Agency, https://dta-www-drupal-
20180130215411153400000001.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/files/digital-professional-stream-
strategy.pdf

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DTA/Digital Profession Recommendations:

Recommendation 1

Recommendation

To ensure a high-level of commitment to increased collaboration and mobility across the APS
it is recommended that Executive performance measures include a requirement to adopt,
support and promote greater collaboration, including sharing of skilled resources.

Supporting information

Over the past 2 years, we have seen a significant shift in our environment with the impact of
bushfires, weather events including hail and floods, and the COVID pandemic. This has
highlighted the need for rapid response and acceleration of delivery of priority outcomes. It
has also provided us with visibility of the demonstrated benefits of what can be achieved
through greater cross agency and cross sector collaboration, and the mobilisation and
deployment of APS resources to where they are most needed.

Recommendation 2

Recommendation

To better meet the long-term needs of the APS in attracting and retaining digital talent we
recommend establishing a ‘Specialist’ employment category. This would be a separate
category of employee, not a classification stream that mimics and sits alongside the
mainstream classification structure.

This would provide individuals with greater recognition and more opportunities to use and
apply their deep technical skills across the APS, reducing the bleed of specialists from the APS
to the private sector.

In addition, we recommend against the adoption of separate ‘professional stream’
classifications schemes to sit alongside the mainstream classification structure. While it is
important to professionalise key or priority areas of the APS, such as digital, data and HR;
separate classification schemes would add additional complexity (e.g. bargaining, industrial
instruments, etc.) and may limit mobility and career path options for staff (e.g. changing
steams).

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Supporting information

The specialist category would allow for the recruitment, placement and movement of people
with technical specialist skills that do not fit within the mainstream descriptors or
expectations e.g. people who have niche or deep technical skills and capability but not the
attributes (or desire) to lead or manage people. Establishing a Specialist category will provide
the flexibility to compete for technical skills across several drivers: remuneration, autonomy,
flexibility and mobility.

Currently, many of these technical specialists are recruited at classification levels that do not
align with the expectations of the role (such as EL2), primarily to meet current market rates
for the capability or to provide a level of seniority or status for their technical skill. This can
lead to poor long-term outcomes as the person is then generally viewed as an EL2 in the APS,
with the commensurate skills to lead and manage, especially from a mobility perspective.

Change of manager, change of role or even movements of functions can result in the person
being considered an under-performer as they may not be seen as meeting the ILS
expectations or work level standards relevant to their substantive classification level.

The current classification structure does not provide visibility of where people with deep
technical/specialist skills are across the APS. Characterizing these people under a Specialist
category will enable that visibility, via agency and APSED data, and provide the APS with
greater flexibility to identify and deploy these people to work on priority outcomes requiring
their specialist skills.

The ability to mobilise these people more effectively would enable the APS to considerably
reduce its reliance on contractors and consultants to fill critical gaps and in turn reduce the
spend on digital and ICT contracts, currently costing the Government approximately $2.2b
each year.

Recommendation 3

Recommendation

Enhance the use of individual flexibility arrangements to provide remuneration and work
flexibility to enable the APS to compete for top digital talent in a highly competitive market.

Supporting information

There is a reluctance across many areas of the APS to use individual arrangements to attract
talent, opting instead to fit specialists into the mainstream structures to achieve the required
remuneration, as identified in Recommendation 2. This has the effect of reducing the ability

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OFFICIAL of the APS to secure the skills and capabilities needed to deliver on priority outcomes,
especially in currently niche areas of expertise where there is a significant gap between
supply and demand.

While remuneration structures are technically out of scope for this Review, it is important to
factor in key issues impacting the effective application of classification structures.

Recommendation 4

Recommendation

To better structure government to operate effectively as ‘one APS’, it is recommended that
Senior Executive ‘Service Managers’ (or Life-Event Journey Managers) be identified and
assigned from across the Australian Public Service, who will have decision making powers
and authority to work across agencies and organisational silos. This would combat Conways
Law5, align to existing APSC and DTA guidance and hold Public Sector officials responsible for
the entire end-user journey.

Supporting information

We know that organisational structures can influence the structure of how services/products
are designed and delivered. Conway’s Law recognises the inadvertent repercussions of
organisational structure in the design of the systems they deliver, a particularly frequent
issue for public services that end up reflecting the structure of the organisations they are
built by6.

Concepts of ‘Virtual Organisational Structures’7 is another key component of contemporary
workforce management. It refocuses organisational hierarchy towards the end-to-end citizen
(user) value streams across traditional organisational silos. Establishing a role of ‘Service
Manager’ (or similar) within Government would help create a virtual organsiational structure
across Government, focused on delivering outcomes based on end-user needs.

“Thus virtual agile organisations derive their competencies from flexible, integrated,
customer-driven work processes and structures, which seamlessly integrate partner,
supplier and customer sites into a dynamic value network.”8
Service Managers will play a key part in ensuring services/products across the APS are joined
up and better meet user needs. Importantly, these Service Managers will be measured on the

5 Conway, M. 1967, Conway’s Law, https://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html
6
MacCormack, A., J. Rusnak and C. Baldwin, 2008, Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational
Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5894.html.
7
Davidow W H and Malone M S, 1992, The Virtual Corporation, Harper
8 Benton, 2019, Agile and virtual organisations, A new organisational order, UNSW

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OFFICIAL success of end-to-end life journeys and collaborate broadly across the APS and other
local/international jurisdictions. Service Managers may even replace (or support) existing
Senior Responsible Officials (SROs).

One of the goals of the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is to foster better joined up
digital (and non-digital) services across end-user life-event journeys (e.g. giving birth, going to
school, find a job, and so on). A key example of this was the review of the Government’s
1027 websites back in 2015, which was found to be more focused on the structure of
Government (e.g. websites for each portfolio/agency/program/etc.) and not focused on end-
user needs. Another example is services for Job Seekers, which a from a review in 2017
identified 26 separate systems/platforms in supporting people looking for work spread across
4 Government agencies (and various other examples across Government).

The DTA established the role called ‘Service Manager’ that forms part of the Digital
Profession. This role (based off the UK GDS approach and other similar models in the private
sector) sought the position of Service Manager to be a Senior Executive responsible for the
“whole end-to-end user experience” across government, even spanning across agency silos.
This was also reflected in the framework released by OECD in the OECD Framework for
Digital Skills and Talent9. Refer to Appendix A: Service Management Approach for an
example of how this would work.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide a submission. If the Independent Review Panel has
questions or requires further clarification, please contact digitalprofession@dta.gov.au.

Yours sincerely

Randall Brugeaud
Chief Executive Officer
Digital Transformation Agency
June 2021

9
OECD, 2021, The OECD Framework for digital talent and skills in the public sector, 2021, OECD,
https://www.oecd.org/gov/the-oecd-framework-for-digital-talent-and-skills-in-the-public-sector-4e7c3f58-en.htm

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