Background Paper on the Australian Public Sector
Innovation Indicators (APSII) Project
Policy Background
In accepting the report “Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for the Reform of Australian Government
Administration” and its 28 recommendations, the Australian Government recognised that public
sector innovation is an important attribute towards improving the productivity and efficiency of the
public sector. Depending on how it is measured, the public sector accounts for between 23% 35% of GDP. Improved innovation became a cornerstone of the government’s APS reform agenda
“Building the Future Together”.
The APSII Project arose from this reform program. There is limited systematic information on the
extent of innovation across the public sector. The then Department of Industry, Innovation,
Science and Research (DIISR) proposed a project in late 2010, which sought to provide data and
metrics on the innovation performance and capacities of agencies in order to assist the
management of innovation in the Australian Public Service (APS).
The APSII Project is also listed as one of the capacity initiatives in the “APS Innovation Action
Plan”, which was signed by members of the Secretaries Board (June 2011). The project addresses
either fully or in part 7 of the 12 recommendations of the “Empowering Change” report.
Governance Arrangements
The APSII Project was initiated by DIISR and approved by the APS 200 Public Sector Innovation
Project1 in late 2010. With the cessation of this sub-committee in April 2011, the APSII Project now
reports directly to the APS Secretaries Board. Its governance arrangements are as follows:
1
The APS 200 Public Sector Innovation Project was a sub-committee of the between 2010
and mid-2011.
1
The findings of the APSII Project together with recommendations for the future continuation of
innovation-specific surveys were presented to the Secretaries Board meeting of 4th September
2013.
Project Objectives
The project’s specific objectives are to provide:
1.
data and metrics on the innovation performance and capacities of agencies in order to assist
the management of innovation in the Australian Public Service.
2.
internationally comparable data and metrics that allows benchmarking of the Australian
public sector against overseas counterparts.
The APSII project thus seeks to develop a common understanding of what public sector innovation
is and a standard approach to its measurement. This will allow organisations to benchmark their
performance against individual peers and the wider APS. In particular, it will assist agencies to
identify their strengths and weaknesses with respect to their innovation capacity and performance
and thereby assist in improving public sector innovation performance. In the longer term, and
following the collection of sufficient innovation metrics, this will also allow Australia to compare itself
internationally.
Project Outline
The initial project plan included the following three stages:

Stage 1: This entailed the conceptualisation and development of a measurement framework
and APS stakeholder consultation over its utility by the end of 2011. Substantial research on
international approaches to measuring public sector innovation underpinned this work. The
analysis of the APSC State of the Service (SoS) survey data was also integral in identifying
further data needs on public sector innovation.

Stage 2: This entailed the gathering of innovation data through a pilot survey and other
appropriate sources and finalisation of the measurement framework. By the end of 2012 the
APSII project had conducted a pilot APS innovation survey and established a measurement
framework paper for public sector innovation in Australia. The promotion of the methodology,
some further analysis and the production of the three reports (documentation of the
methodology, a pilot report on the state of APS innovation and an agency-specific analytical
report) were prepared in early to mid-2013.

Stage 3 (Optional): This was initially flagged as a possible option subject to funding and
entailed the possible extension of the measurement framework to the wider public service at a
State/ Territory and Local Government levels. While the APSII Project did not formally extent to
jurisdictions outside the Commonwealth Government, the methodology was made widely
available for the use of other jurisdictions and several States expressed an interest in trialling it.
Consultative Arrangements
As the APSII Project was aimed at the entire APS, it required extensive collaboration with several
key government agencies and a whole-of-government approach. To assist with the project, two
formal reference groups were established:

The Technical Reference Group (TRG): This group was made up of technical experts on
information surveys and data analysis from the then Department of Industry, Innovation,
Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIICCSRTE), the Australian
Public Service Commission (APSC), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the
Australian Innovation Research Centre (AIRC) at the University of Tasmania. The TRG had
an integral role in assisting with the development of the methodology and on all technical
aspects of the project. In addition to active inter-sessional correspondence, the group met on
average three times a year2.
2
The TRG met three times in 2011 and 2012; a further meeting was held in early 2013;
another (final) debrief meeting is planned after the APSII Project has been submitted to the
Secretaries Board in September 2013.
2

The Stakeholder Reference Group (SRG): This group is made up of representatives from
most of the 20 portfolio departments in the APS 3. The SRG was established to provide advice
on the project and its outputs from a user perspective. The group met three times throughout
the life of the project. Initially, the group provided input to the development of the project in
June 2011 after the release of the APSII Consultation Paper. They met again in November
2012 after the preliminary processing of data from the pilot survey and provided advice on
further analysis. The third and final meeting was held in May 2013 before the finalisation of the
project and its reports.
DIICCSRTE worked closely with the APSC throughout the APSII Project. In particular, information
collected on the APS by the APSC as part of the annual SoS surveys was analysed as part of the
project. The 2010-11 Employee and Agency surveys contained new innovation questions that
were developed in collaboration with the APSII Project. Chapter 9 of the SoS Report that year
presented key findings on “Innovation and Efficiency” across the APS. Amalgamated data from
the 2010-11 surveys was also being used in the development of the APSII methodology and the
questionnaire deployed in the Pilot Survey built on the SoS questionnaires.
Other regular consultative arrangements include dissemination of information and updates on the
project via the Innovation Network and the Public Sector Innovation Website
(www.innovation.govspace.gov.au). The States and Territories are also advised on a regular
(quarterly) basis of the status of the APSII Project through the Coordination Committee on
Innovation (CCI) and the Commonwealth State and Territory Advisory Council on Innovation
(CSTACI).
Pilot Survey
The APSII Pilot Survey was conducted in following three phases:

Phase 1 – Pre-survey Interviews: After the development of a draft pilot survey through
several reiterations and TRG input, the questions underwent cognitive testing during a series of
pre-survey interviews. A total of 30 SES Band1 officers from 19 APS agencies participated on
a voluntary. Selection of interviewees was made on the basis of the size and function of their
agency and branch and gender balance. The aim was to cover as diverse a group as possible
and to test all of the major survey questions. Interviews were conducted 3 stages between midMay and Mid-June 2012. Feedback from each stage informed subsequent refinements to the
draft questionnaire.

Phase 2 – Conduct of Pilot Survey: After its finalisation, the pilot survey was launched on 15
August 2012 for one month. It was in the form of an on-line survey administered by the APSC
and took on average 30 minutes to complete. A total of 956 invitations were sent to a group of
randomly selected SES Band1s across the APS (~ 2,100 officers). By the time the survey
closed, 367 responses had been received from 61 agencies (13 small, 26 medium and 22
large-sized agencies). This represents a response rate of around 33% and covered more than
15% of all functional units at a branch level across the APS.

Phase 3 – Post-survey Interviews: Following the conduct of pilot survey, data was analysed
and a small number of questions were selected for post-survey interviews. From the survey
participants who had indicated that they were available for follow-up contact, seven were
selected and post-survey interviews were held in December 2012.
The Pilot Survey was finalised in early 2013 in light of the data analysis and post-survey interviews.
The revised version has been considerably shortened and will be available on the Public Sector
Innovation Website together with the key findings from the survey.
International Role
The APSII Project’s preliminary findings were presented at an Expert Workshop on measuring
innovation in the public sector at OECD Headquarters (Paris, February 2013). The workshop was
organised under the auspices of an OECD subcommittee, the National Working Party of Experts on
Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI), which is in the process of conceptualising public
3
Only one Department withdrew from the SRG process; the remainder attended at least one
meeting.
3
sector innovation and developing a methodology for its measurement and data collection. The
APSII Project (together with the SoS data) is one of only four large-scale surveys conducted
internationally and it is of great international interest. It places Australia in a solid position to
contribute to international efforts in developing an Oslo-style manual on public sector innovation.
The project team is also liaising with Statistics Sweden, who are keen to review our methodology
before launching their own pilot survey under a wider Nordic initiative.
Project Overview
The following schema summarises the first two stages of the APSII Project in terms of its
timeframe, milestone deliveries and consultation processes.
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