Governing the City State - Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate ...

The Sustainable Development Directorate would comprise the current Department of theEnvironment, Climate Change, Energy and Water, the ACT Planning and Land Authority,and elements of the current Department of Territory and Municipal Services relating totransport planning, as well as Heritage and the Government Architect from the current CMD.In the preferred structure, municipal services are embraced as part of the responsibilities ofthe city state government, rather than seen as an add-on to the ACT “state” bureaucracy.Indeed, for many Canberrans, it is the standard of this service delivery line which coloursoverall perceptions of the government and its performance. One only has to listen toChief Minister’s Talkback on Friday mornings on ABC local radio (which might be bettercalled TAMS Talkback) to understand the importance and value Canberrans place on thisservice delivery line. The fact that Chief Ministers make themselves available in this way iscommendable demonstrating the immediacy of city state government and the desire forintimate connections between the Government and citizenry.All Directorates would utilise a common, but expanded, Shared Services Division (attachedto the Finance Directorate, which would function, in effect, as the corporate area of theunified ACTPS. Efficiencies are to be expected in the proposed structure. IndividualDirectorates would need to continue to include specialist staff in people and performance andworkforce management (as individual departments do now), especially where they manage aspecialist workforce (e.g. health or emergency services).A single ACTPS agency under a single Chief Executive and Head of the ACTPS would:• allow for greater flexibility in transferring resources to meet emerging issues;• assist in ensuring alignment of effort, creation of a shared understanding of priorities, anda cohesive and common sense of purpose;• facilitate a simplification of industrial arrangements and reductions in the complexity ofthe ACTPS employment framework;• allow small groups performing similar work in different agencies, but struggling from alack of critical mass and narrow collective skill base, to be combined into viableorganisational units;• be entirely consistent with, and enhanced by, construction of the proposed ACTGovernment Office Building in Civic;• give impetus to alignment of information systems, and other whole of governmentprojects relating to records and document management;• reduce duplicated effort across agencies (e.g. in the preparation of Chief ExecutivesFinancial Instructions) releasing efficiencies which could be reallocated elsewhere;• facilitate greater alignment and coordination among staff directly supporting the operationof the machinery of government (including Cabinet Liaison Officers and DepartmentalLiaison Officers in Ministers’ Offices); and• provide greater resilience and flexibility for future administrative realignments.Governing the City State: 82