DIMA Annual Report 2000-01

Management and accountability - continued

Corporate governance

Ethical standards

This was the first full year of operation of new procedures under the Australian Public Service (APS) Code of Conduct provisions of the Public Service Act 1999. A

wide range of behaviours were considered in the context of the APS Code of Conduct. These included the use of e-mail and the Internet, work attendance, interpersonal relationships, recruitment and threatening behaviour.

During the year, code of conduct investigation and decision-making procedures were amended to allow staff who were subject to investigation to view the conduct report before finalisation.

A review of the operation of code-of-conduct investigation and decision-making procedures in the department is underway in light of the first year's experience of the new legislation. It is expected that, as a result, revised procedures will be put in place in the coming year.

A total of 208 allegations relating to the conduct of departmental officers was received during the period under review (234 in 1999-2000).

During 2000-01, 373 cases were closed (119 in 1999-2000) of which 95 per cent were unfounded (83 per cent in 1999-2000).

Four employees were counselled about their actions and one matter was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for criminal prosecution.

The employment of two employees in Australia and three locally-engaged employees overseas was terminated. Two employees resigned while under investigation.

Internal investigation is overseen by an Internal Investigations Steering Committee, chaired by the Deputy Secretary.

SES remuneration

Members of the Senior Executive Service in the department are remunerated through Australian Workplace Agreements which provide for a base salary, a limited range of fringe benefits and performance pay. Details are at Appendix 2 and in the financial statements.

Management of human resources

The department has 3,640 employees, 58 percent of whom are women, plus 663 locally-engaged staff overseas. Thirty-three per cent of staff in the Senior Executive Service are women, while 47 per cent of staff in the Executive Level 1 and 2, and equivalent professional groupings, are women.

Details of the department's staffing profile are at Appendixes 3, 4 and 5.

The focus of the department's human resource strategies during the year has been the finalisation of its second Certified Agreement and the recruitment of staff to meet a growing workload.

The department has introduced a program of six-monthly reporting on its workforce, with the first report prepared in May 2001. The report focused on the impact of high rates of recruitment on the profile and experience levels of staff. It also contained an assessment of staff separation rates and measures that indicated the attractiveness of the department as an employer.

The department continued to face pressures in getting skilled workers to cope with a growing workload. Key areas of pressure were border integrity and intelligence gathering, the overseas service and ICT. Our response in a workforce planning sense has been twofold.

The department's second Certified Agreement was certified on 31 May 2001. The Agreement covers 3,576 employees. The department has established an employment framework through our Certified Agreement that improves our attractiveness as an employer by setting competitive levels of remuneration and offering an attractive and flexible package of conditions.

The department has also focused on targeted recruitment, in particular through a large graduate recruitment program (73 in 2001 compared with 41 in 2000) and substantial external recruitment of staff with middle management experience for overseas service and with IT skills. There has been an increased use of recruitment consultants and of alternative selection methods.

Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) are used in a targeted way to address identified business needs. Thirty-five Senior Executive Service staff and 29 non-SES staff are covered by AWAs. Non-salary benefits under AWAs are provided to staff who have managerial responsibilities.

The benefits include private-plated Commonwealth vehicles, mobile phones for work and reasonable private use, access to a personal computer and departmental software at the staff member's place of residence and help with school fees (for staff who are relocating for work purposes).

Details of the salaries paid to staff by classification are at Appendix 6.

Under the department's devolved human resource management model, responsibility for training and development rests with the line manager. This includes responsibility for assessing the outcomes of training and development and evaluation of its effectiveness. The tool for identifying and addressing learning needs is the individual staff member's Performance and Learning Agreement, set up under the department's performance management scheme.

Business areas are encouraged to develop and deliver department-wide training relevant to business needs.

In the past year such training focused on four key areas - induction and structured training for new recruits, administrative and migration law training (a core competency for the department), conduct and ethical issues, and financial and contract management. In addition, a range of developmental courses were offered without a specific vocational focus, including effective working and learning strategies.

ICT has been a focus of training and development because of its link to general organisational productivity. The department has commissioned a training-needs analysis with a focus on making staff more efficient and productive in the use of desktop applications. An ICT training strategy will be developed and implemented in the coming year in response to this analysis.

The focus of productivity improvements over the past year in the management of staff has been the use of the department's performance management system to address issues of staff performance, including development opportunities, skill gaps and specific cases of under-performance. The Performance and Learning Scheme will be reviewed during 2001 to determine its effectiveness.

The Certified Agreement contains a commitment that staff and the department will work together to deliver productivity improvements by embracing change and improved business practices. The Agreement provides increased flexibility in service delivery through the capacity to recruit staff to non standard hours of duty while providing flexible working arrangements that enable staff to balance work and family commitments.

The allowance structure has been rationalised to achieve simplification and to provide greater flexibility. In particular, the Agreement introduces a flexible multi-tiered Remote Area and Exceptional Circumstances Allowance which substitutes for previous entitlements that were accrued on an hourly basis, required detailed recording and were expensive to administer. The Agreement also extends the length of the working day by four minutes.

Improvement in corporate information processes has also contributed to productivity, including the activity-based costing methodology which has provided a comprehensive understanding of the cost of the department's operations resulting in better management and target-setting capacity.

Productivity improvements in service delivery have been delivered through significant re-engineering, most notably in unauthorised arrivals, benchmarking performance for some services and investing in new technologies. The department continues to pursue organisational efficiency by consolidating operations, for example in the area of salaries processing. It is well advanced in the investigating of appropriate models of service delivery for corporate services including further competitive tendering and contracting.

On occupational health and safety, the department remains committed to achieving SafetyMap Initial Level standard although it was unable to progress this in the timeframe indicated in the last annual report. Further details on occupational health and safety appear later in this report.

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