Senator blasts APS outsourcing as an industry of 'sleazy Canberra deals'

Brian Tait hopefully a new government will stop this!

Jacqui Brown it won’t. The model works fine. The moment this is changed people will complain the APS is too big and spending too much money on internal people. This goes round in circles

Brian Tait after the last 8yrs I am sure that APS personnel and ultimately the public will be pleased that the former APS model is brought back so that the culture and expertise is an ongoing process and not ad hoc as often happens now !

Ben Stevens By the same token, let’s not forget that efficiency dividends, recruitment freezes, and staffing caps have routinely been applied by both parties while in government.

Eliane Prideaux exactly. Lawyers and other professionals have dedicated high paying non management streams.

Technical skills need the same.

I personally love managing staff, and am technical, but I’ve never been able to promote shining stars that report to me because they couldn’t manage staff.

Ahh, but you must remember the move to contracting started under Keating when they made the top levels under contract to make the PS more responsive. The results seem to suggest more politically inclined yes men, and that over the years a culture of senior leaders who could not make it in the Private sector, and don’t understand the “provide service” over “make a profit”, who then hire their mates who also could not make it in the Private Sector.

Lynette Clifton nobody is planning for DMO to spring back to life full of apprentice boilermakers and nuclear engineers

Brian Woodbridge not really, most contractors are just ex-APS or ex Defence who have good skills in demand and want better pay, we are under direction of the APS staff, so there is no privatisation, APS still run the show, they just have competent staff to do the job, if the APS were to pay the same wages as private, many would be happy to accept fair remuneration for their skills, not many are willing to take a $20-60k pay cut from what a fulltime private gig would pay, noone is ever complaining about cleaners being outsourced, as it is a low paid job, but they are just like IT workers, hired to provide a service to the APS not to the public, where IT fails with contractors is on the lack of direction and clarity of APS management.

Jilly Beans agreed, but the APS does itself no favours. They are so passive and poor at contract negotiations and management.

Michael Miitze yes true- consultants always look so surprised when you take them to task on something!

Jack Hearps It was going on in the 90’s with both Labor and LNP governments. Nothing new!

Jay Kay pretty much the same across most of the proffesional fields. There needs to be a complete overhaul of the salary and benefits structure.

Jay Kay yep. Web devs sit at ASO-6. Go in as contractors & get $120 an hour!

Steve Aust Yeah, looks good, until you have to pay your own super, no holiday or sick pay and, theoretically at any rate, the ability to be disengaged on any given day.

In practice there is a huge amount of contract staff in the APS that have been there for years, in some cases decades, completely belying the need for short term expertise. As a result, going in as a contractor is pretty good.

I’ve always questioned why IT staff need to be APS. APS should be customer facing, whereas IT Staff are just providing a service to the APS itself, as IT we are no different to the cleaner, I don’t see anyone on the bandwagon to get the lowly paid cleaning job a APS wage, but they are always on it with us IT contractors. If they stopped empire building and treated the IT as another service rather than having to have their own of everything, outsourcing it priperly to large IT companies, with proper shared services models could actually be cheaper for nearly all but the biggest departments. As for APS in Defence, they are just contractors with an APS salary, they were brought in to reduce the cost of Uniformed Defence staff, and it has destroyed a big part of the military, many positions that were rest postings to allow rest and training opportunities before being posted back to a fast paced unit were given to APS, so now Military members burn out. This is nothing to do with APS, and more about trying to outsource the low paid jobs (like cleaners), whilst trying to in source the high paid jobs to keep them under the APS fulltime wage caps. APS IT staff are paid about 20-50% less than their fulltime industry counterparts, so it’s not contractors making big pays that are the problem, it’s comparable wages to private industry, if they want to make the APS viable, they need to bring back the pension schemes, or realise that by taking away the pension schemes, you now need to pay the same as private industry, as you no longer offer something that private doesn’t.

John Haddon I’d argue that many poor IT outcomes have come from the overreliance on contractors, with managers lacking the SME skills to drive successful architectural direction (because most of those have gone contracting 😛). Whilst contractors can be useful to bring in to pinch hit on projects, to lock in a room and feed red meat so per say, we are definitely at the overreliance stage and need to bring back in house many of these roles.

There used to be different paystreams and classifications back before Howard that recognised that different staff have different skillsets without requiring EL1+ staff the requirement to manage other staff, its probably time we returned to that model.

But yes, I completely agree as to many of the reasons why that you mentioned.

Steve Aust also, to get a higher pay as a perm staff you are expected to manage people. You can be a ‘glorified paperclip’ (paid out of a different bucket, not affect ASL) for years, getting good pay, not expecting to manage people and doing good work.

Jay Kay I still think IT can be managed solely outsourced if done correctly, why can we buy an operating system rather than build our own, but the staff that manage it be in-house? IT is a service, there is no need for it to be APS, you just need competent APS at EL2 and SES levels who manage it properly, as there is a large number of incompetent senior APS who change their minds more than their underpants on what direction IT is going today. Also many senior APS Staff who run IT don’t understand IT and don’t see the value of Architects, and think everything can just be bolted together mindlessly… proper architecture from the ground up would fix many issues, again incompetence within senior levels that is creating an underlying issue that is not easily fixed by anyone.

John Haddon Outsourcing cleaners works because the job is relatively simple, both from work performed and a management of service.

IT is incredibly complex, and as you mentioned with ‘managers who can’t make up their mind’, how can we expect them to when they likely don’t have the skills to direct or even understand much of the overall architecture? And that’s before we get into things like ensuring value for money.

So no, I really can’t agree with you that IT should be completely outsourced, as the only outsourcing arrangements I’ve seen work well have been those with contract managers usually being a SME and/or the architect of the solution.

The UK follows the model of totally outsourced IT (at least in the departments I consulted to). They were routinely fleeced by all and sundry. That said, poor understanding and accountability means that every large organisation is (US and Australia) so far as I’m aware/involved. Consultants are out to take at much money as possible, and delivery is really the responsibility of the buyer, always.