APS Craft

What is APS Craft?

Mary Wiley-Smith: When we're talking about craft, it's the reason that the public service really exists. The role that we play in democracy. And I think for individuals, it gives purpose. And so really understanding that it gives you purpose and an understanding of the APS, how to navigate it, your responsibilities that you have for your own personal development, really how to collaborate, engage, and work with your colleagues across the service to achieve a particular outcome.

Letitia Hope: So our craft is our skills and capabilities in the Australian Public Service to ensure that we can deliver effective services on behalf of Australian government, to Australian citizens. So it's all the things that we need to know about how we do our business. What are the processes, procedures? What's the legislation? What are the skills that you need to do your job as an effective public servant?

Marlee: It all comes back to evidence-based decision-making. And as a public service, we have an obligation to provide our decision-makers with robust evidence that we've spent a lot of time researching so that they can justify their decisions to the Australian public.

Krishna: It doesn't matter what agency you work for because we all really operate as one big family. And we all have a common goal, which is to make the most efficient and successful decisions.

Marlee: We have public servants across Australia, overseas, and they also need training and development in public service craft capabilities.

Stephanie Foster: So I'm actually really excited that we've started using the word "craft." There are a handful of things which we learn and we practise in the public service that are special.

Letitia Hope: We want to be trusted and reliable. We want to be able to create value to the Australian citizen. That's our job in the public sector, to deliver government policies and services that create value to Australian citizens. So the more skilful we can do that, the more efficiently we can do that, the more effectively we can do that, the more value we create to the Australian citizen. We want to be a learning organisation. We want to be an organisation that cares about knowledge and custodianship of knowledge.

Marlee: I like to describe the Academy as kind of an all around learning experience.

Sophie: I think by having all of that information in one place, it makes it quite accessible for anyone in the APS wherever they are at any time that they wish to learn something.

Krishna: And maybe through that sharing of knowledge we could come up with more efficient solutions to a lot of problems because a problem I might be facing in my agency might have already been addressed and solved by someone else in a different agency, but we just haven't heard of it because we didn't have the portal to connect us.

Stephanie Foster: This is a natural evolution of the kind of strategy and policy that the Commission has been pursuing for some years, but it is very exciting to see it pull together and branded in a way which I think will allow it to have enormous impact.

Greer: One of the great things about kind of having a hub is being able to know that there's a trusted source of information where you can access a whole range of resources.

Bill: I haven't stumbled across that in the APS yet, so that would be very helpful. It's a one stop shop, if you want to call it that, simply

Kayla: Being able to learn at my own pace, sort of online. Being able to pause, go outside for a walk whenever I need to and get my brain re-invigorated, is something that really helps me learn.

Michael: If I want to move out of my area into a line area out of corporate, then it's almost, I need these skills.

Mary Wiley-Smith: We attract wonderful people to the public service because they are really interested in making a difference and helping their country.

Sophie: Making sure that the service is capable of delivering, at its best, to the Australian community.