The purpose of this presentation is to provide information and promote access to data from the Australian Public Service Employee Census: a large scale survey administered to over 155,000 employees in over 110 agencies.
Since 1998, the Australian Public Service Commissioner has been required to provide an annual report to parliament on the state of the Australian Public Service (APS): the State of the Service Report. In 2003 an employee survey was introduced as a key source of data for the report. Originally administered to a stratified random sample of employees from across APS agencies, in 2012 this was changed to a census model. This was hugely successful, with over 87,000 respondents from 111 agencies taking part; a response rate of 55%. The next year built on this success with over 102,000 respondents from 113 agencies taking part; a response rate for 2013 of 66%. This has provided a wealth of data on issues such as employee engagement, turnover intentions and work-life balance.
As well as the State of the Service Report being freely available, since 2011 raw data has also been made available to the public and to researchers using the Commonwealth Government’s open data platform: data.gov.au. This provides a resource to researchers and academics from the broader community to study workforce issues in a large, but unique context: The Australian Public Service.
This presentation will cover the scope and nature of the employee census to allow researchers to understand the issues it can be used to investigate. It will address the processes used to protect the anonymity of respondents as well as the limitations this may place on the data’s utility. Some of the complications we have encountered while using this data will also be discussed to allow for greater dialogue between APS researchers and the broader research community.