In house government legal services in federal agencies should be headed by an independent lawyer from the Attorney General’s department, according to a wide-ranging report to the robo-debt royal commission by former senior bureaucrat, ANU honorary professor, Andrew Podger.
“An appropriate level of independence might be achieved by requiring an Agency’s senior in-house counsel to be a seconded lawyer from AGD .” “The relationship should be along the lines of trustees, each respecting the other’s role and responsibilities; not quite equals but not the ‘principal-agent’ relationship which has emerged since the 1980s, let alone the ‘master-servant’ relationship which I have detected in more recent times.
He recommended making the public service commissioner responsible for public servants’ performance rather than the secretary of the Prime Ministers department.C would be insufficient, particularly given the common practice over recent decades of prime ministers ensuring that the secretary of their own department is someone they have had a personal connection with .”
He said there was “a culture that undervalues the knowledge, experience and expertise of its middle managers and even its [first level senior executive service] SES Band 1 staff.” He called for more senior executives from the DSS and Service Australia be required to spend “some time experiencing first hand front-line service delivery.“He called for Service Australia to be made a statutory authority so as to strengthen its independence, and for the CEO to be based on merit.
Lol what do the bootlickers at the AFR know about frank and fearless. Half the reason Robodebt could even be conceived is because the trash, commercial news media in this country is so compromised and untrustworthy. Costello's AFR is a joke.
Robots 🤖 and Algorithms are means to an end and not an end in themselves. Vested interests attempting to convert art of human living into a science of trials, errors & experiments should never forget that science is a boon with adverse side-effects if not put to good use.
Remember this?
pjlogue Misnomer AFR. Facts.The LNP removed “fearless” from PS duty statements because “it might encourage subordination”. +Morrison publicly stated PS were to be “enablers and not to present obstacles” to Govt policy Sources:/2
No point in bolstering the independence of the FPS if it's filled with upper management bureaucrats appointed by the LNPCorruptionParty is there?! auspol Population Representative board members of the RBA rather than theoldboysclub wouldn't hurt either.