Corporate services review to provide direction to a new department

The Department of Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government was established in the Machinery of Government changes announced on 14 September 2010. Since this time, and in parallel to establishing operations, the Department has continued to grow and recruit staff.

Nous undertook a range of interviews with executives across the Department and key members of the management team within Corporate Services to identify the business needs for corporate services and current level of capability. Feedback from the consultation process was integrated with our experience working with other clients and research on building high performance organisations. From this we developed a service delivery model for the Department to clearly define expectations and roles of functional areas within Corporate Services and to structure organisational design. A capability management maturity model was used to assess the Department’s current approach to managing its capability. In addition to the consultation process, the Department provided a set of résumés from staff within Corporate Services which was used to develop a profile of the experience of the current workforce.

The findings from our analysis have been used to develop recommendations for improving the Department’s capability to deliver quality corporate services.