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Catherine McCulloch

Submission: 

Flexible FTE

The reduction and capping of FTE in commonwealth government departments while strategic has created an environment where employees are 100% busy doing their day job. This means that vacancies, sick leave, new work and especially not BAU projects are difficult if not impossible to resource. I would like to see the APS be more flexible so that a pool of positions are available at all levels for short term requirements that can be justified with a business case.

For example we recently were required to completely update our internal website through which we provide the majority of our services. We don't have a dedicated Webmaster positions in the Department to build it for us so four unqualified staff have been working bit by bit for over 2 years to get it built and compliant and its still not ready. This does not seem to be an efficient way of doing things. Instead one staff member should have been taken off line as the SME and a new qualified SharePoint staff member engaged for 6 months to just get it done.

I fear this scenario is being replicated hundreds of times over each Government Department. I hear the Department of Finance championing GovTeams (which Defence does not have access to) to enable collaboration and Defence is championing stretch positions and secondments, yet I am yet to see people released for this to happen as we cannot back fill vacant positions. Its inefficient and has a negative impact on capability for everyone concerned.