Australian Public Service to release digital workforce plan in 2025
The Australian Public Service (APS) plans to release a strategy next year for attracting and retaining digital talent in the government workforce.
Speaking after the publication of the APS’s 2024 reform update earlier this month, Katy Gallagher, Australia’s minister for finance, women and the public service, said that the strategy would contain a comprehensive plan to ensure that the workforce keeps pace with technological change in data, digital and cybersecurity and can meet growing demand for digital services.
She said that the country’s public service faces several large challenges, notably the rising need for services provided by Medicare, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, as well as the requirement to address the challenges of climate change and cybercrime. She also noted specific opportunities, such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
“We have to make sure that we have a public service…that can harness those opportunities to deliver better services and more responsive policy in a way that is safe, responsible and proactive,” she said.
As part of the plan, Gallagher said the APS will look to improve the internal mobility of public servants to digital roles. This will be helped by using what she called “merit lists and pools”: lists of candidates assessed and ranked by agencies according to their suitability for a role, as part of a competitive selection process.
The minister finally said APS would also be keeping its nationwide licence for the Skills Framework for the Information Age to “better understand the skills needed across digital data, cyber and AI”.
Read more: Australian government workers save an hour a day in large generative AI trial
‘Canberra-bashing on the grab’
Australia’s ruling Labor party and the opposition Liberal-Nationals Coalition take very different views about the current size of the public service workforce and structure.
The Labor government, led by Anthony Albanese, won the country’s last election on a platform to reform government bureaucracy. The party based its approach on the principles of integrity, people-centred service, model employer status, and government’s capacity to deliver.
In her speech following the APS’s reform update, Gallagher also rejected the opposition party’s call for the workforce to be cut by 20%.
“The Coalition sees areas like defence as much more of a priority than office staff in Canberra given the precarious times in which we live and threats in our region,” the opposition Coalition leader Peter Dutton said in May.
Gallagher described the party’s stance as “Canberra-bashing on the grab”, insisting that the challenges facing government instead demanded better leadership and investment in the APS.
“When we came to government, essential services were in crisis — veterans waited months just for claims to be allocated for processing, families couldn’t get through to Centrelink … but we’ve turned this around,” she said.
“Within the next six months, we know the future of the public service will be at the centre of an election contest – between a government that understands the public service’s vital role in our democracy, respects that role, and wants to protect it – and an alternative government which promises to cut jobs and reduce service outcomes.”
Read more: Public service jobs ‘front and centre’ in Australian election contest, says minister
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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