I'll comment on the economy and the change in the economy.
We have an issue with dealing with high volumes of applications and dealing with the applications fairly. We have an issue of making sure that all regions get equal access. We have issues of language in these jobs. And I expect that all those issues would become more acute as the public service jobs have an element of security that other jobs don't have, so I expect more applications. I expect more challenge. I expect we'll have a lot more challenge in managing that system.
Terry Hunt is the director general responsible for the EX audit. We set up a series of criteria determining whether this was good enough. I'll ask him to expand on that. Satisfactory was good enough. We're not looking for perfection.
When we were looking at the others and you weren't good enough, it meant that there was a major problem.
If you were unsatisfactory, our 47 cases, you're required to say what you need in a meritorious appointment. One of those criteria weren't met, so you didn't meet the test, so that's unsatisfactory.
When they looked at the files, if it looked as if the whole system was set up to get a favoured person, that was not a fair process. That was unsatisfactory.
If you looked at a file and there was absolutely no sign that anything was assessed, it looked as if a miracle occurred and this person was named, you could not--it was just empty: unsatisfactory.
In the middle, where we're saying this really needs to improve, we looked at the compliance with the legislation and the directives. But it means if you are asked to assess somebody's skills, we expect to see there's some kind of assessment. So there was a big set of problems.
The areas where we had the largest set of problems were those areas called “unadvertised”. The new legislation allows managers to appoint people through a competitive process and it allows appointments unadvertised; you don't compete the process. Those we expect to be used judiciously. We expect managers to have a good reason why they go unadvertised. What would be a good reason? If you have a critical shortage area--there are not many people with those skills, you've tried before, you've looked extensively, and you now have someone--that would make sense for me to have that be unadvertised.
Frankly, if you're hiring administrative support, I don't see that there's a good reason for going unadvertised. So we have a lot of issues with the unadvertised, and those we would put in the area of unsatisfactory.
Terry, did you want to add to that?