Cultural KPIs: Closing the Gap review calls for stricter public servant assessments

The Productivity Commission said Australian governments have fallen short of their commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. Among its recommendations, the commission said public servants should be required to demonstrate their attempts to implement the goals of the Closing the Gap Agreement.

The Productivity Commission review

Under the Closing the Gap Agreement, the Productivity Commission was charged with the responsibility of reviewing progress towards the goals of the agreement every three years. Recently, the commission released its first report, and the results were less than encouraging.

“Across the country, we have observed small tweaks or additional initiatives, or even layers of initiatives, as attempts to give effect to the agreement. However, real change does not mean multiplying or renaming business-as-usual actions,” said the commission.

“It means looking deeply to get to the heart of the way systems, departments, and public servants work. Most critically, the agreement requires government decision-makers to accept that they do not know what is best for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people.”

In essence, the commission found that governments “are not adequately delivering” on their commitment to overcoming entrenched inequalities. The recommendations made in the report were wide-ranging, but among the most interesting was a proposal that public servants should have their performance judged against Closing the Gap-style criteria.

Cultural KPIs

Among its recommendations, the commission argued that Australian governments need to embed responsibility for realising the goals of the Closing the Gap Agreement within individual employment contracts.

“The Australian, territory and other state governments should ensure that the employment requirements of all public sector chief executives, executives, and employees require them to continually demonstrate” action towards fulfilling the Closing the Gap commitments.

The commission said employees should be required to demonstrate how they have attempted to:

• Improve their cultural capability.
• Understand ATIS history and context.
• Eliminate institutional racism.
• Develop relationships with ATIS people.
• Support the principles outlined in the Closing the Gap Agreement.

The report did not go into specific detail about the nature of these requirements; however, it did recommend that the precise changes will vary depending on the seniority of a given position.

“The strongest requirements should be placed on chief executives and executives, who would have the responsibility of opening up their organisation’s processes and operations to ATSI eyes for identification of institutionalised racism,” the commission said.

The proposed review requirements will vary depending not only on seniority, but on the nature of the role in question.

“Those whose role involves providing policy about, or contributing to the design and delivery of services to, ATSI people should have more stringent KPIs than those whose role is procedural or technical in nature (such as a tax clerk or meteorologist),” said the commission.

Other recommendations

The commission made several other significant recommendations to better align government performance with the goals of the agreement. Notable recommendations include the following:

1. Amending the agreement to prioritise “self-determination” over shared decision making.
2. Recognising the unique abilities of ATIS community-controlled organisations to deliver on the goals of the agreement.
3. Ensuring government ministers are more regularly meeting with ATIS peak bodies.
4. Increasing resources diverted towards fulfilling the aims of the agreement since, to date, the resource commitments have “fallen far short of the ambition of the agreement”.
5. Establishing a Bureau of Indigenous Data.

“Change can be confronting and difficult. But without fundamental change, the agreement will fail, and the gap will remain,” concluded the commission.

“We cannot afford to waste the opportunity that this agreement presents. All Australians should expect that in three years’ time, the commission will be providing a very different assessment.”