Leaders

A key objective of the Government Sector Employment Act 2013 was to create a simpler executive structure that gives this cohort greater mobility across the sector. The Government Sector Employment Legislation Amendment Act 2016 supported this by aligning the senior executive employment arrangements of the NSW Health Service, Transport Service and NSW Police Force with those of the Public Service.

Table 3.1: Senior executives in the public sector, census period FTE, 2022 to 2023

At June 2023, there were 4,379 FTE senior executives in the public sector. Of these, 4,265 were in the government sector, which represented an increase of 9.4% compared to the previous year.

The largest increases in the government sector occurred in the Public Service (+197 FTE or 8.2%) and the Transport Service (+141 FTE or 14.0%). In the Public Service, the Department of Education (+45 FTE) and Department of Regional NSW (+28 FTE) combined accounted for a third of the increase, with the remainder spread across a number of agencies. For the Transport Service, Sydney Metro (+75 FTE) and Transport for NSW (+72 FTE) accounted for the increase. 

A notable decrease in State owned corporations (−334 or 84.1%) is due to a review of the definition of ‘senior executives’ for reporting purposes, most notably in Essential Energy, which changed from 275 FTE in 2022 to 8 FTE in 2023 (−267 FTE or 97.1%).

Table 3.2: Senior executives in the Public Service by portfolio, census headcount, 2022 to 2023

The number of senior executives increased across most portfolios in the Public Service, as shown in Table 3.2. The largest increase occurred in the Environment and Planning portfolio (+93), largely due to a number of machinery of government changes including the establishment of the NSW Reconstruction Authority, the transfer of Western Parkland City Authority from Enterprise, Investment and Trade, and the transfer of the Greater Cities Commission from Transport. The largest proportional increase was in Treasury, largely due to the transfer of Infrastructure NSW from Transport.

It is important that government sector senior leadership reflects the cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity of the NSW population. The Public Service Commission’s Increasing cultural diversity in the NSW government sector senior executive cohort report¹ outlines its strategy and holistic programs to increase senior executive diversity in the NSW government sector. 

Current data suggests that language may be a greater barrier to employment in senior executive roles than identifying as belonging to a minority group. Figure 3.2 shows that 15.0% of senior executives identified as being from a minority group in 2023, slightly higher than the representation for all employees (14.8%). In comparison, the proportion of senior executives identifying their first language spoken as a child was not English is roughly half that of all employees (10.8% of senior executives compared to 19.4% of all employees). 

There was a 4.9pp increase in senior executives identifying as being from a minority group from 2019 to 2023, however, over the same period there was only a 1.9pp increase in senior executives identifying their first language spoken as a child was not English. 

Senior leaders³ is a broader group than senior executives and includes people in other senior leadership roles such as school principals. Increasing the representation of women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in senior leader roles has been an area of focus for the government sector.