Public Eye | Paperless public service not yet a reality, security clearance delays, COVID and floods kept APS staff busy

In February, Liberal spokesperson for the public service, Senator Jane Hume, fired off a bunch of questions to agencies to see how much they've been spending on paper.

The numbers are in, and for some of them, it is a sheetload.

The Australian Electoral Commission has spent more than $200,000 on paper since the 2018-19 financial year. To be fair, it's cut back.

In the 2018-2019 financial year it splashed out $105,531, but by 2021-22, it halved their spending to $56,421.

(Please send budgeting tips our way, AEC).

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Department of Finance have also each spent more than $100,000 on paper in the last five years.

Meanwhile, the Office of National Intelligence could not provide a breakdown of its paper spend "for reasons of national security". Okay, then.

Some smaller agencies are really leading the charge.

The Office of the National Rural Health Commissioner said it had only spent "an average of approximately $150.00 on paper per year over the last five years".

The Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency one-upped them though, spending just $185 over the last five years.

ASIO was also aiming for extra credit, breaking down its response to reams of paper, total weight, and the percentage of its orders that were Australian made.

In case you were wondering, it has ordered 4176 reams of paper so far this year.

That's nearly 11,000 kilograms of paper, ASIO will have you know, and 99.95 per cent of it has been Australian made.

Interestingly, the intelligence agency has already spent more this financial year than it has the last couple of years, and the figures are only up to March 6.

A follow-up question: How much is it spending on shredders?

A lot has happened since 2020, and don't public servants know it.

The APS has a system in place to redeploy staff to Services Australia in emergencies.

No big deal or anything, but the government has had to surge thousands of staff five times in the last couple of years.

First there was COVID, with 3759 public servants from 15 agencies deployed to manage JobKeeper payments from March 2020.

Then there were floods in March 2021, with just under 300 staff assigned to provide relief assistance.

Then COVID rebranded and came back with the Delta variant, and 730 public servants were directed to manage pandemic leave disaster payments from July 2021.

Six months later, the virus had another crack with the emergence of the Omicron variants, which triggered another 475 public servants to deal with disaster payments.

Deep breath, last one: In March 2022, 700 bureaucrats were tasked to manage the release of disaster payments for floods in Queensland and New South Wales. Big yikes.

Perhaps weary public servants can take solace in the outcomes of their work: $12.4 billion was paid out to people in need during the Delta surge, $493 million during Omicron and $857 million during floods.

Former top Army official Mick Ryan did not hold back in a scathing spray against the Albanese government last week over its support for Ukraine.

The retired Major-General appeared at The Sydney Dialogue on a panel alongside Ukrainian ambassador Vasyl Myroshnychenko and others, lamenting Australia's "parsimonious" support for the eastern European country.

Just seven cents per person per day has been spent on supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia's invading forces, he said.

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"Previous generations of Australians - all the way back to Federation - understood what mattered in Europe, mattered to us. I don't know how the current government's forgotten it," he told the forum.

"Quite frankly, our support to Ukraine has been parsimonious and taking a selfie in Parliament doesn't kill a single Russian soldier and that's what we need to be helping the Ukrainians do."

According to a recently-answered question on notice, the Australian government's most recent announcement for support was in October last year allocating additional humanitarian visas.

Public servants know waiting for security clearances can be a bit like all-day training sessions. You hope it'll be swift and painless but you know it likely won't be.

IGIS boss Christopher Jessup once summed the process up as a "black box" - an application is popped in one end and it's hoped something will come out the other one day.

But to make matters worse, a recent attempt by the Department of Defence to resolve some of the delays further screwed the pooch.

As The Canberra Times reported in February, a central portal called MyClearance was created to help streamline the system and make things flow a little faster. Except it's not really doing that at all.

In a recently answered question on notice, the Office of National Intelligence, which is authorised to do its own vetting, said it's had to get creative in order to work around the portal's pesky problems.

Due to some "login and multifactor authentication issues", ONI staff are manually contacting the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency by phone and email to get clearance holder information.

It takes approximately five minutes per request for ONI staff to do this over the phone but anywhere between the same day and five days for an email response.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil flagged she's keen to get ASIO to do the top vetting job, introducing a bill this month.

But it's probably of little relief for anyone hoping to hear back about their clearance soon.

Last week we told you our quest to find out how many public servants opted to work Australia Day was over.

We were wrong.

A question on notice from Senate estimates has revealed 67 Attorney-General's Department employees opted to work on January 26.

"All requests were in writing to the relevant delegates in accordance with the department's enterprise agreement," AGD's answer stated.