Tasmanian State Service selection criteria examples.

I act with integrity in my professional conduct, including in situations where the small scale of the jurisdiction makes integrity especially visible (restate the criterion). In my current Band 6 role with a Tasmanian Government department, I administer a grants program supporting regional community organisations across the state (situation). During a recent grant cycle one applicant was an organisation chaired by someone I knew personally through a local community context — the kind of overlap that's routine in Tasmania given the state's scale (task).

I declared the connection in writing to my Manager and the assessment panel chair before the assessment process began, with specific detail about the nature of the personal connection and my view of whether it created an actual or perceived conflict. I sought guidance on whether I should recuse myself from assessing that application or whether the declaration was sufficient. I followed the guidance I was given, which in this case was to participate in the assessment with the declaration on record but not to lead the assessment of that particular application. I made sure my participation in the broader assessment process was substantive rather than withdrawn on principle — declaring the conflict and then continuing to contribute fairly is what the State Service Principles require, not stepping back from work where connection has been declared. I documented the assessment process for that application in additional detail relative to the others, so the record was clear if questions arose later (actions).

The grant cycle completed without procedural challenge. The applicant organisation was unsuccessful on its substantive merits in a competitive field. My Manager subsequently used the declaration and handling as an example of good practice for the team, given how regularly Tasmania's scale produces these kinds of connections (result).

I manage stakeholder relationships effectively in Tasmania's distinctive operational scale, where stakeholders are personally close and operational decisions are visible quickly across small networks (restate the criterion). In my current role I am the regional liaison for our agency's program with stakeholders across the state's tourism, hospitality, and cultural sectors (situation). Last financial year I coordinated consultation on a proposed policy change that two peak bodies had publicly opposed (task).

I met each peak body separately rather than calling a joint forum first, because the joint forum would have been performance-oriented while separate meetings let each stakeholder raise concerns candidly. From those meetings I identified that the underlying disagreement was narrower than the public position suggested — both peak bodies supported the policy direction but disagreed on implementation timeline. I drafted a discussion paper that named both sets of concerns explicitly and proposed an implementation approach with a longer transition window than originally proposed. I circulated the paper to both stakeholders simultaneously and held a follow-up forum using the paper as the starting point rather than open-ended consultation. I made a point of being honest about what could and couldn't move in the policy — Tasmania's stakeholder networks know quickly when officers are managing impressions rather than substantively engaging, and trust once damaged is difficult to rebuild in a small network (actions).

The policy proceeded with substantive support from both peak bodies. The implementation timeline was modified in line with the consultation findings. Both peak bodies subsequently participated constructively in the program's annual review, including the one that had been publicly the most opposed (result).

I deliver outcomes against agreed deadlines, including in the resource-constrained environments that are characteristic of small jurisdictions where roles often combine work that would be split across multiple positions in larger jurisdictions (restate the criterion). In my current Band 6 role I am responsible for the agency's annual performance reporting plus three discrete grant programs plus the operational coordination of a stakeholder forum that meets quarterly (situation). The breadth of the role is typical for Tasmanian senior operational positions — it would be split across two or three roles in a larger state's agency (task).

I plan my work in quarterly horizons rather than weekly or monthly, because the breadth of responsibilities means short horizons cause me to lose sight of the overall picture. I treat the calendar as a binding constraint rather than a guideline — if a stakeholder forum is on the calendar three months away, the preparation work for it starts at week ten, not week one. I delegate routine work explicitly to junior team members rather than absorbing it myself when capacity tightens, because the alternative is that I become the bottleneck for all of it. I escalate to my Manager early when I project that a deadline is at risk, with a specific proposal for how to handle it rather than just flagging the risk. I have built relationships with counterparts in other agencies who handle similar breadth, so we can borrow capacity from each other for time-bound work without going through formal arrangements that would slow the work down (actions).

Across the past three reporting cycles I have delivered every major commitment on time, including in periods where two or three commitments converged on the same fortnight. The Manager has cited the workload planning approach as a model for newer Band 6 officers in the directorate (result).

I communicate effectively with the diverse audiences typical in Tasmanian public sector work — community stakeholders, industry representatives, ministerial advisers, and inter-agency counterparts (restate the criterion). In my current role I deliver briefings on policy changes to all four of these audience types regularly, and the same content needs three or four different versions depending on who is receiving it (situation). Tasmania's scale means a single policy change may need briefing to industry, community, the Minister's office, and another agency within the same week (task).

For industry audiences I write in the operational terminology they use, focusing on what the change means for their operational decisions and compliance posture. For community audiences I strip out the policy technicality and focus on what the change means for the matters they actually care about — environmental outcomes, community amenity, service quality. For ministerial advisers I keep the technical detail but lead with the political and policy dimensions because that's what the adviser needs to brief their Minister on. For inter-agency counterparts I write in the technical and policy language they already understand. I prepare the technical version first because it forces me to understand the change properly; the other versions are then translations of content I genuinely understand. I send drafts to one colleague for a fresh read before delivery, particularly the community version, because I have learned my own second-pass review catches less than someone else's first-pass read (actions).

Feedback from each of the four audience types has been consistently positive across the past 18 months. Two of my industry briefings have been adopted as templates by the agency's broader sector engagement function. A ministerial adviser explicitly requested me to handle technical questions in a recent ministerial roundtable (result).

I identify procedural improvements and implement changes that produce measurable outcome improvements, with particular attention to how small-jurisdiction scale enables faster improvement cycles than larger agencies typically run (restate the criterion). In my current role I noticed that our agency's stakeholder feedback collection process produced inconsistent data quality — some teams collected detailed feedback systematically, others collected almost nothing (situation). The variation meant our annual reporting on stakeholder engagement was unreliable (task).

I worked through the variation rather than assuming it was a discipline problem with the teams collecting less data. The actual cause turned out to be that the feedback collection tool had been designed for a larger agency context and required more administrative overhead than smaller teams could sustain. I designed a simplified feedback collection approach that captured the essential data points with substantially less administrative burden, and tested it with two teams over six weeks. I incorporated their feedback on the simplified tool before broader rollout. I documented the revised process clearly enough that anyone in any team could run it, and I built in a six-month check-in to confirm the change hadn't introduced new problems. Because Tasmania's small scale makes rollout fast, the change was deployed across the agency within three months of the original observation — faster than a larger agency would typically manage (actions).

Feedback collection consistency across the agency improved measurably across the following two reporting cycles. The data quality issues that had compromised annual reporting were eliminated. The simplified approach has been picked up by two other Tasmanian agencies through inter-agency networks (result).

I manage and develop staff with particular attention to the dynamics of small teams, where individual capability gaps and individual contributions are both highly visible (restate the criterion). In my current Band 7 role I manage three direct reports across Bands 4 and 5 in a Tasmanian Government regional office (situation). The team's small size means each member's strengths and gaps are visible to the rest of the team and to external stakeholders quickly (task).

I established development plans for each direct report in the first month of managing them, mapped to the band descriptors at the level above their current band. For each, I identified one stretch assignment and one development goal. I held fortnightly one-on-ones structured around their work rather than mine, leaving room for issues to emerge without competing with my agenda. I made a point of identifying acting opportunities at higher bands for team members ready for them, even where it meant losing capacity temporarily. I addressed one team member's performance gap through a structured discussion within four weeks of identifying it, with a written summary and a four-week check-in — in a small team, performance issues that aren't addressed quickly affect the rest of the team's confidence in the management of the team. I made my own work visible to the team explicitly, including the parts that hadn't gone well, because in a small team modelling honest reflection on your own work is more powerful than asking direct reports to do it abstractly (actions).

Two direct reports were promoted to higher bands across the development cycle. The team member with the performance gap responded constructively to the formal process and is now meeting role expectations. The team's annual engagement scores were the highest in the regional office (result).