A capability review of PM&C was conducted in late 2025, as required by the Public Service Act 1999. The review provided valuable insights into our strengths, including:
- our committed workforce
- our highly trusted and professional relationships with the Prime Minister’s and portfolio ministers’ offices
- the effectiveness of our specialist functions.
The review recognised the work already underway to build capability across a range of critical areas, while encouraging us to:
- sharpen our leadership and governance
- set and sequence strategy and priorities
- improve our internal and external collaboration.
In March 2026, we released our Capability Review Action Plan. This outlines how we will strengthen our capability to lead from the centre of the public service and support the Prime Minister, Cabinet and portfolio ministers to improve the lives of all Australians.
The action plan sets out 3 focus areas and 20 priority actions for the next 4 years. Together, these actions will help us respond to emerging challenges, risks and opportunities with greater agility.
Focus area 1: Empowering our workforce
Focus area 2: Delivering through collaboration
Focus area 3: Strengthening how we operate
Focus area 1: Empowering our workforce
We aim to enable a highly capable, future-ready workforce with a unified purpose, clear priorities and a coherent value proposition – equipped, trusted and empowered to take considered risks, make decisions and deliver for government.
We will enhance our capability by:
- refreshing our strategic direction and embedding our ways of working to help staff understand when and how to strategically engage on government priorities
- clearly and regularly articulating government and departmental priorities to help staff understand how they can best contribute to meeting them
- clarifying delegations of authority and risk tolerances so our people can confidently manage risk
- developing our workforce strategies to guide strategic planning and future workforce decisions, including fostering a diverse workforce
- refreshing our learning and development strategy to strengthen knowledge, expand access to high-quality training and support professional development
- developing a knowledge management framework to set out how we capture, store and share information to maintain strong corporate knowledge.
Strategic Workforce Plan
A central priority is the development and implementation of an enterprise-level Strategic Workforce Plan. This plan will establish a more forward-looking, evidence-based approach to workforce planning, enabling PM&C to identify future capability, capacity and workforce composition needs. It will support more deliberate decisions about how the department recruits, develops and deploys its people to meet evolving government priorities.
Through the Strategic Workforce Plan, PM&C will be better positioned to anticipate emerging skills needs, particularly in areas such as national security, international policy, program delivery, and data and digital capability. It will enable more coordinated workforce decisions and strengthen the department’s ability to align its people and capability with future demands.
APS Strategic Commissioning Framework
In line with the APS Strategic Commissioning Framework, we have identified the following job families as PM&C’s core work for 2026–27: policy; legal and parliamentary; senior executive; data and research; and portfolio program and project management.
During 2026–27, we will continue to embed the APS Strategic Commissioning Framework and strengthen our organisational capability. Our key actions include:
- continuing to monitor and report on the use of contractors in core work
- converting contractor roles to APS roles where possible across both core and non‑core work
- maintaining visibility of the framework’s requirements through procurement processes.
Additionally our Strategic Workforce Plan will enable more forward‑looking, evidence-based decision-making on workforce issues.
Focus area 2: Delivering through collaboration
We aim to work cohesively as a department and in partnership with stakeholders to align priorities and deliver coordinated outcomes.
We will enhance our capability by:
- developing and communicating a well-defined central agency value proposition that reflects our unified purpose, the varied ways we deliver for government, and our role in upholding a culture of excellence across the APS
- showing leadership on government priorities by delivering high-quality advice that draws on perspectives from across government and the community
- developing an enterprise stakeholder engagement framework to support collaboration with external stakeholders
- reviewing and strengthening our strategic collaboration to better identify coordinated, whole‑of‑government priorities
- strengthening communication pathways and information flows to ensure staff at all levels have the context and knowledge to confidently make decisions
- strengthening Cabinet operations to embed better coordination, timeliness of advice and delivery of government priorities.
Focus area 3: Strengthening how we operate
We aim to make our systems more coherent and efficient to enable high-quality delivery.
We will enhance our capability by:
- designing a corporate operating model that clearly articulates our enabling service offer
- using forward-looking technology, including artificial intelligence, to harness efficiencies
- developing a data strategy and appointing a Chief Data Officer to uplift our data maturity
- embedding an enduring security culture to protect our people, information and assets
- improving risk management and reporting to enable us to understand our risk appetite and better respond to emerging risks and opportunities
- finalising our integrity framework to embed our integrity processes
- fostering a financially literate culture through targeted training, modern financial systems and streamlined processes
- streamlining operational workflows to reduce unnecessary complexity and improve efficiency.
Strengthening digital, technology and security capability
As a central agency, PM&C relies on secure, reliable and responsive digital capability. This supports time-critical decision-making, information sharing and coordination across portfolios and jurisdictions.
PM&C is accelerating the modernisation of core systems and transitioning legacy infrastructure to resilient, cloud-native architecture. This approach is improving scalability and supporting a more mobile workforce. Security best practice underpins this work, with a focus on protecting our assets, reinforcing secure handling practices and building organisational resilience in how we manage the Australian Government’s most sensitive data.
Building on this foundation, PM&C is supporting the responsible adoption of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. A staged approach allows the department to test fit-for-purpose use cases – such as intelligent data analysis for evidence-based policy and routine process automation – while maintaining transparency, accountability and appropriate risk management.