Foreword

The Australian Public Service Statistical Bulletin 2005–06 presents a summary of employment under the Public Service Act 1999 at June 2006 and during the 2005–06 financial year, as well as data for the past 15 years.

The data shows how the composition of the Australian Public Service (APS) has changed over time, and provides an opportunity for assessing the impact of changing capability requirements and human resource (HR) policies on the structure of the APS. A more comprehensive statistical analysis of the APS is provided in the State of the Service Report 2005–06.

The main data source on APS employees is the APS Employment Database (APSED), which contains data extracted from agencies’ HR systems. The Australian Public Service Commission continues to work with agencies to improve the quality and timeliness of the data they provide to APSED. To ensure that sound conclusions can be drawn from the data, it is important that agencies assign a high priority to providing accurate and timely data to the Commission.

It is especially important that agencies place strong emphasis on improving the quality of employee provided data—educational qualifications, previous workforce status and diversity data—to ensure the validity of analysis based on this data.

Lynelle Briggs
Australian Public Service Commissioner

November 2006