The public service should become more flexible in sharing its resources between departments in order to provide a more integrated and cohesive service, the Taoiseach said today.
Speaking at the first national conference of the Institute of Public Administration, Mr Ahern said a new Partnership agreement, if ratified by all parties, is likely to contain a significant agenda of change for the Public Service.
"This will be important as it demonstrates the commitment of Public Servants to ideas such as; re-vitalisation of a civil and public service which will have an increasingly aging profile in the coming years, through more open recruitment at middle and senior grades; flexibility of work practices through better team-working, integration of services and less energy being spent sorting out 'turf' issues; and stronger competition in our recruitment and promotion procedures to ensure that we can attract, motivate and harness the best of our public service talent."
He added that "the spirit of Partnership applies in the implementation of these ideas.
"We should regard the modernisation provisions of any new agreement as the floor - not the ceiling - of our ambitions. We should look on those provisions as enablers of the kind of imaginative and flexible service delivery that our citizens require."
The Taoiseach added that benchmarking was also a good indicator of measuring public performance against "best international practice".
He said it was necessary to be in a position to judge the performance of the public service system as a whole.
He announced that he had asked the Implementation Group of Secretaries General to review the performance indicators which will be used in the new reporting system to the Oireachtas and to prepare recommendations for consideration by the Government of a system of external review of the structures.
He also wanted to see a new "leadership initiative" for the public service as a whole.
"I believe that requires providing the right mix of specialist staff, who have developed careers through areas like human resources or finance or project management. It also means ensuring that people in senior positions have had a sufficient breadth of experience, across departments and agencies and also across different types of management responsibility."