APS can improve compliance with legislation, record keeping, Commonwealth Ombudsman report finds

The Room for Improvement report, released earlier this week, points to failures to comply with legislation, record keeping, internal guidelines, complaint handling and communication in the Australian Public Service.

The data is de-identified, but drawn from recent reports by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, which provides oversight of decision-making, public service delivery and complaint handling in federal and ACT government agencies.

"I think the APS, in particular, is thinking a lot about reform and what things it can do better in the wake of robodebt, so I think it's a good time to put these things out," Commonwealth Ombudsman Iain Anderson said.

"When we do reports about particular agencies, they might not be given as much regard by public servants if they're not in that agency.

"So this is really a genuine attempt to say, 'These things happen in every agency. So what can you do to avoid them'?"

The report referred to agencies approaching the ombudsman "because they have discovered that they have not acted in accordance with the law".

It described one case in which "a department was acting based on what they thought the law should say, not what the law actually said".

"The department told us that the legislation (passed five years ago) 'did not correctly reflect' what they had intended to do (and had been doing since)."

Mr Anderson called the case "absolutely alarming".

"The way in which the agency explained it to us, to give that explanation that effectively the law is wrong, well, that's not acceptable," he said.

"If you think the law is wrong, then you still need to follow it.

"You should work actively to get the law changed. And as it happens, that agency did then give advice to government and the law was changed and they've acted to remediate what happened.

"But to have the initial reaction of saying, 'Hang on the law is wrong', that is really quite worrying."

In another case, decision-makers in an agency were not recording their reasoning, meaning the government could not provide assurances the decisions were appropriate, nor could it monitor the agency's deployment of power.

"It also meant that people affected by the decisions did not know the basis on which the decisions were made, which affected their ability to decide whether to seek review of decisions," the report found.

The Australian Public Service Commission welcomed the released of the report, and said it was committed to a public service "that embodies integrity in everything it does".

"The Ombudsman makes important observations and recommendations for better public administration and complaint handling in accordance with its role as an independent Commonwealth integrity agency with an oversight remit in agency decision-making, public service delivery and complaint handling," an agency spokesperson said.

"The observations reflected in the report - including that agencies can improve their compliance with the law, recordkeeping practices, clarity of policies and guidelines, people-centred feedback systems and processes, and effective communication with the public - are well-established.

"They are in line with the obligations that all APS employees must uphold under the APS Values, Employment Principles and Code of Conduct."

The robodebt royal commission report, released in July, also identified "woefully inadequate" record-keeping practices within the APS and patchy understandings of the service's role, principles and values.

Failures happen where public servants forget people are at the centre of their processes, Mr Anderson said.

"I think it's primarily about not really putting people at the centre of service delivery and policy implementation," he said.

"I think sometimes people end up, and I'm not saying they're doing this for the wrong reasons, I'm just saying that inadvertently, they can end up putting their own agency at the centre of their thinking, and they need to put the people who are impacted by the actions of the agency at the centre of things."

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The report outlines the impacts on people of poor service and policy processes, including "applicants being wrongly deprived of financial support for a period of time" due to a relevant policy provision not being considered.

Poor complaints systems, and inaccurate, unclear or inconsistent information provided by government agencies, also reduced trust and caused "confusion and frustration", the report found.

The Australian Public Service Commission has been contacted for a response to the report.

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