State of the Sector Report

The Public Sector Commissioner reports to Parliament annually on the state of 'administration and management' across the public sector, and on compliance with standards and ethical codes.

There are three versions of the report available:

What does the State of the Sector Report cover?

The State of the Sector Report contains information on:

human resource management set out in s.8(1)(a)-(c) of the Public Sector Management Act (PSMA).
principles of official conduct as set out in s.9 of the PSMA
public sector standards, the public sector Code of Ethics, and codes of conduct developed under s.21 of the PSMA
conduct and integrity of public interest disclosure officers under s.20 of the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

What were the key observations for 2011?

The sector is a dynamic environment.

For the year to June 30, the public sector workforce grew by 2.8% to 152859 employees. This growth was contained within Government’s FTE ceiling.
For the same period 21098 staff left a position and 18906 people commenced in a new role. 24% of employees have been employed by their current employers for less than two years.
In the WA public sector there are more than 120 public sector occupations employing over 100 staff and 4.9 public sector employees for every 100 people in WA. The Kimberly region has the highest number of public sector employees per 100 persons (8) and one of the highest separation rates.

Overall compliance with standards and codes is high

Employees believe that their agencies actively encourage ethical behaviour, and agencies across the sector are active in addressing conduct risks.
The number of discipline cases investigated and the number of grievances lodged across the sector increased over the previous year.
The number of breach of standards claims lodged remains very low.

Workforce planning continues to be a crucial issue

The ageing workforce remains a key challenge. 22.3% of the workforce is over 55 years.
Agencies are encouraged to integrate workforce planning and diversity strategies to better target underutilised groups in the workforce and enhance service delivery to the diverse WA community.
Improved identification of existing indigenous employees is assisting the public sector towards national objectives; however separations of indigenous employees outnumbered commencements in 2010-2011.

Integrity and accountable leadership is high but could be enhanced

98% of agencies have codes of conduct that reflect the Code of Ethics.
60% of all employees are familiar with the Code of Ethics and 73% are familiar with their agency’s code of conduct.
58% of respondents to surveys agreed that their agency had policies and procedures to assist employees manage conflicts of interest.
Employee knowledge about the PID Act, their rights under the Act, and their confidence in PID processes generally, are low across the sector as a whole.

Agency governance and administration is robust

84% of agencies have planning processes described as ‘systematically managed’ and 86% of agencies have mature processes for monitoring and auditing financial performance.
69% of agencies have managed or integrated policies in place for managing material risks. This has improved since last year but is the least mature of the main governance systems.
Agencies are encouraged to do more in monitoring and analysing website usage, and to integrate corporate and business planning with web planning.

Where are the previous State of the Sector reports?

The previous reports are available on this site.The 2010 report was released in the period when PSC and the Office of Public Sector Standards were merging. The most significant change is the inclusion of workforce demographic data, and an increased emphasis on promoting good practice across the sector.

Reports before 2010 were called State of the Service Reports and are still available. The best efforts have been made to maintain consistent data sets to enable comparisons between datasets.