It’s a torrid time out there right now in contracting and consulting land if you have any government agency as a client, with new ministerial Fatwahs issued seemingly daily about the dos and don’ts of any interaction between the public service and private the private service.
The Juvenalian comedy of the Big Four consulting firms appearing before various committees has continued in earnest, but there are strong signals well-seasoned parts of the Senior Executive Service have started to make their own luck, not least by seizing the opportunity to deliver some sensible and lasting reforms to arrest capability deficits and skills flight.
And then there’s Defence.
This week kicked off with a fairly well-flagged missive from the secretary of the Department of Defence, Greg Moriarty placing a 12-month time-out on some Australian Public Service departees recontracting with their former employer to dampen labour price inflation.
As reported yesterday, it’s by no means the only measure Defence is using to retain and attract staff in a tight market, with a new role of chief personnel officer appointed to sell the national gun shop to the masses.
Since that article ran we’ve had a bursting inbox of requests to dive a bit deeper into the contracting reforms and moratorium, as staff, plus hired help and recruiters all take stock.
The Mandarin asked Defence a few basic questions about how the moratorium will or won’t operate. To be clear, there’s obviously a decent dose of policy-based performance art here, and senior bureaucrats are thoroughly expected to implement to a policy of the government of the day (though recently there are clearer boundaries). We tried to keep it pretty simple, first take, to get an answer back fairly quickly.
On the record, Defence said that it’s “committed to supporting the Government’s plan to invest in the public service by identifying where work can be done more efficiently and effectively by public servants.”
It couldn’t realistically be otherwise. On the bans, a Defence spokesperson told The Mandarin that: “The moratorium will restrict Defence managers from contracting any Defence Australian Public Service (APS) employee or part or full-time Australian Defence Force (ADF) member who has separated from Defence within a 12-month period, into roles that should be undertaken by Defence people.
This does not impact Reserves. This said, there is a bunch of qualifiers and carve-outs, the main one being that if you work for someone else apart from Defence when you come back, that’s fine, but you can’t just quit and then reapply for your old job as a juiced-up non-ongoing.
“The moratorium does not prevent recently separated personnel from employment with Defence industry partners, consultancies or outsourced service providers that work with Defence, just the return of those personnel to Defence into roles that would normally be performed by the APS,” the Defence spokesperson told The Mandarin. And in case you wondered, yeah, nah, nobody’s putting their actual name to this.
The Mandarin can confirm that Defence is introducing a moratorium on contracting personnel who have recently separated from Defence into “above the line” contractor roles that we’ll try to explain a bit further down.
The contracting moratorium took effect on Monday, August 7, 2023. So here are some of the qualifiers, and they’re biggies. The Mandarin understands the moratorium does not apply to existing ‘above the line’ contracting arrangements, outsourced service providers, or consultants with specific skillsets.
It’s understood that the definition of “above the line contractors” is that they are engaged to undertake work that could be performed by an Australian public servant.
They are not engaged to deliver capability for or on behalf of industry partners. What’s also understood is that a register will be established to assist transitioning ADF members and veterans who are interested in APS roles.
There is also a swag of exemptions to the moratorium that may apply to support Defence’s management of capability requirements and Defence people.
These exemptions include: circumstances of compassionate or special measure; commercial necessity to meet Defence capability needs; or if Defence personnel who intend on separating from Defence have negotiated a contract prior to the release of the moratorium.
And there are also some additional clarifications on where the moratorium doesn’t hit, or specifically apply to.
It’s understood by The Mandarin that the moratorium does not apply to: part-time or full-time ADF members who have transitioned as a result of a Command Initiated Transfer to the Reserves or redundancy; part-time or full-time ADF members who have medically transitioned out of the ADF; other employment categories, including the reserve workforce; and APS employees who have retired on medical grounds and are engaged as part of a rehabilitation or return-to-work plan.
Defence will continue to support the employment of veterans.
So let’s look a little deeper into what “above the line” and “below the line” means for contractors. Recruiter Kinexus, which appears to do a reasonable trade in people with clearances, offers the following advice to candidates.
“Above the Line (ATL) organisations are working on behalf of the Commonwealth (Defence). When the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has a capability requirement, ATL companies help Defence define it, acquire it and sustain it.
“ATL people tend to approach projects at a concept level, and help Defence evaluate their needs and assess outcomes,” Kinexus says. “Below the Line (BTL) organisations, on the other hand, are tasked with delivery of the contracted capabilities.
“They’re the ones who get into the detailed design and delivery aspects of a given piece of equipment or system.” As the machine modernises, it makes some decisions and not others it seems.
“We’re seeing a slight trend towards integrating ATL and BTL work.
“There are a few reasons for this, but it is mainly happening where there are opportunities to realise process efficiencies and associated cost savings. How far this trend will go, and what it means for Industry, is a bit of an evolving picture,” Kinexus says on its website.
And that folks, is what we have. Apart from the rebuttal that Defence did not spend $26 billion on contractors and consultants in the past year, a truly remarkable figure of more than half of total Defence spend, that somehow roped in capability delivery. For all of Defence’s challenges, and there are many, they probably do know the difference between a consultant and a tank.
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Easing contractor dependence in Defence will be difficult, secretary says
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