Posted by Taken On Notice | Australian Public Service Humour
Nobody gives you a manual when you join the APS. There is the induction, the mandatory eLearning modules, and the onboarding checklist — and then there is the actual information you need to survive. The stuff that gets passed down in quiet corridors, over bad coffee, and through a single knowing look from a colleague who has been here long enough to know things.
Consider this your unofficial orientation.
1. "Taken on notice" is not a defeat. It is a strategy.
Taking something on notice is not an admission that you don't know the answer. It is a graceful exit from a question you were not adequately briefed on, buying you the time to get the actual answer from the person who actually knows. Senior officials use it at estimates. You can use it in your weekly team meeting. Both are valid.
2. The real deadline is never the stated deadline.
When someone says "by end of week," they mean Thursday. When they say "urgent," they mean sometime today unless something more urgent comes up, in which case they mean Monday. The exception is ministerial correspondence, which means what it says. Learn to read the difference. Your EL1 already knows the difference and will not always tell you.
3. A good brief is worth more than a long meeting.
If you can write a clear, well-structured brief, you will go far. Not because it is an impressive skill (though it is), but because a well-written brief prevents the meeting from happening in the first place. Clear writing is an act of mercy. Practise it.
4. The reply-all button is a test of character.
There is never a good reason to reply-all to a departmental email chain. There is no exception to this rule. The one time you feel there might be an exception, there is not. Do not reply all.
5. Your work calendar is not private.
Everyone can see it. Block your focus time explicitly. Put something in your calendar before someone else does. An empty calendar is an invitation. A calendar that reads "Document review — do not book" is a small but effective act of self-preservation.
6. The person who knows everything is almost never the most senior person in the room.
There is someone in your team — possibly an APS5 or a long-serving APS6 — who knows where everything is, what happened before you got here, and exactly why that process exists even though it makes no sense. Find this person. Treat them with enormous respect. They are not obligated to share what they know. If they choose to, consider it a gift.
7. "Noted" means nothing good.
When an SES member says "noted" in response to your idea, they are not confirming that your idea has been logged for future action. They are politely declining it in a way that leaves everyone's dignity intact. This is actually a fine outcome. Take the note, recalibrate, and come back with a stronger proposal or a better moment.
8. Every agency has the same meeting. It just has a different name.
The governance committee, the working group, the reference group, the steering committee — these are all structurally identical. They have a chair, a secretariat (which is one person who is also doing four other things), and an action items table that gets reviewed at the start of each meeting and has not materially changed since the previous one. This is fine. This is the system. Participate constructively.
9. Never underestimate what someone's out-of-office message reveals about them.
A one-liner with a delegate contact: professional, experienced, leaves nothing to chance. A paragraph about their itinerary followed by three different emergency contacts: thorough but anxious. No out-of-office at all: either very senior, very chaotic, or blissfully off-grid. All three types will cc you in an email chain on their first day back.
10. The job title on your email signature is not the whole picture.
The APS runs on people doing considerably more than their classification technically requires — and often doing it without much acknowledgment. If you are one of those people: it is seen, even when it is not said. If you are the one seeing it: say something. A brief "good work on that brief" goes a long way and costs you nothing.
The unwritten rules exist because they work. They are the institutional knowledge that machinery of government changes can't touch and no eLearning module will ever cover. Now you know them.
And if you've been living these rules long enough that they feel like second nature — there's probably a mug, a mousepad, or a tote bag that gets it. Browse the full range at takenonnotice.com.au. Ships Australia-wide.