CHAIR – Minister, could you please outline for the committee how many full-time equivalent positions last financial year and this financial year to date have been subject to recruitment freezes, target negotiated voluntary redundancies, other forms of redundancies, or any other vacancy control, vacancy management or workforce renewal initiative resulting in positions being eliminated or deliberately unfilled?
Mr VINCENT – I will ask the secretary to supply those numbers.
Mr LIMKIN – The department has identified several strategies to meet our budget efficiency dividend. Just for the committee’s information, we manage this on a department basis, we do not manage this on an output basis.
CHAIR – The department being Transport or DSG?
Mr LIMKIN – The Department of State Growth. Transport is a group within DSG so it’s managed on a department basis. They really fit into a couple of categories and we will talk about the workforce committee in a second.
We’re looking at it how we combine functions and services to implement leaner operating models; reviewing how we administer programs, for example, grants and our capital programs to ensure they deliver value for money for the Tasmanian community; and looking at how we adopt digital to help remove some paper process out of that. For example, we have a requirement where we have to send out all the registration and licensing information using the postal system. Is there a way we can do that through digital if people make that choice? I acknowledge there are a number of people in our community who will not make that choice because they aren’t digitally literate, and we have to work on that, but they have to have paper. It’s about providing those choices. We’re looking at those types of services. We’ve also looked at how we reduce our operational expenditure and supplies, consumables, marketing, accommodation, ICT and a variety of other mechanisms.
In relation to the government’s announcement, we have established a workforce committee to help us better manage our workforce and align their capabilities to what we do. We do that through a workforce committee, but first of all we start by asking and empowering our accountable managers and deputy secretaries to really look at it first. Does the function of the role relate to a delivery of an election commitment? What is the financial and budgetary implication? In the road space, for example, a lot of this is linked to the Commonwealth agreements and we want to make sure we deliver on those commitments, so I have to make sure that those roles that need to be filled don’t impact those types of things. Is there a legal risk, is there safety and are they continuing to deliver outcomes? First of all, the deputy secretary makes those determinations and then it comes to the workforce committee, who looks at it on a department-wide basis to see if we can move resources around and create opportunities for people to use their skills in different ways. Then there is a decision made based on that basis.
CHAIR – Have you got a percentage of how many things you’re going to cut? Has the position of urban mobility planner been filled, minister?
Mr LIMKIN – In relation to that specific position, if we can just confirm the name of it I will check.
CHAIR – The urban mobility planner, I think.
Mr LIMKIN – I’m happy to take on notice, subject to you, minister, the number of requests the workforce committee has rejected on a department basis. I do not have a target of cuts, what I have are budget efficiency dividends and I have a policy from the government about their [inaudible]. I do not have a target for any reduction in public servants.
