The federal bureaucracy may be forced to shift parts of national offices out of Canberra as it struggles to recruit and retain enough staff.
The latest State of the Service report says more than half of the Commonwealth's senior executives and middle managers will be eligible to retire this decade.
It also reveals that, despite the looming personnel crisis, barely one in five government agencies has a workforce plan to help identify talent and manage succession.
The report warns the bureaucracy's labour shortage has already led to a lack of skills, particularly in IT, accounting, law and management.
''Measures to improve recruitment, as well as retention rates among older workers, are needed,'' it says.
Public Service Commissioner Steve Sedgwick told The Canberra Times yesterday agencies were now asking, ''If you can't get the workforce to come to Canberra, do you take Canberra to the workforce?
''There's been quite a trend in recent times, particularly for the larger and ... distributed organisations, to ask themselves exactly that question.
''And there are a number of cases - Customs is one, Immigration [Department] might be another where there are national functions run out of state offices rather than being run out of Canberra.''
He said the option was particularly valid for departments with national or international networks.
''It doesn't matter where the bits end up, whether they end up in Canberra or Brisbane, it's just a pipe,'' he said.
''There are a couple of agencies that are looking quite systematically at whether there are better ways of attracting the workforce by locating work where the people are rather than expecting people to move.''
Mr Sedgwick's own workplace, the Public Service Commission, had already devolved some national functions to its state network.
Mr Sedgwick expected more agencies to follow suit.
About 39 per cent of federal bureaucrats work in the ACT, though Canberrans make up 63 per cent of staff employed at executive level 1 and above.
The ACT's labour market has been Australia's tightest for most of the past decade. The latest employment data shows Canberra's unemployment rate is just 2.9 per cent compared with 5.1 per cent nationally.
The State of the Service report also shows the bureaucracy's rapid growth of the past decade has now effectively ended.
The public service grew by just 1.7 per cent in 2009-10, and employed 164,596 staff as of June 30, 2010.
By comparison, its average yearly growth between 2000 and 2008 was 4.4 per cent.
Women now make up 57.4 per cent of APS staff, though only 37.1 per cent are part of the senior executive service.
The typical public servant is 42 years, female, university-educated and employed at APS level 6. In Canberra, however, more staff are employed at executive level 1 than any other grade.
For more on this story, including comments from Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.
Source: The Canberra Times
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