This report summarises recommendations from a 'hackathon' run by IPAA ACT with the support of the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) and the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) in July 2022.

Hackathons bring together diverse groups with a range of expertise and experience and use time-constrained and collaborative processes to develop innovative and implementable solutions to an identified challenge. IPAA ACT worked with the APSC and NIAA to engage First Nations people working in the public service to participate in this hackathon, which brought together 64 First Nation and non-First Nation participants, including facilitators and scribes, to develop practical and implementable ways of improving employment outcomes for First Nations working people in the public service. It was held as part of IPAA ACT’s contribution to NAIDOC Week 2022. 

This report is only a short summary of the discussion and is focused on practical and implementable ideas for action that were across four specific domains: workplace culture, recruitment, employment, and career pathways. This report offers broad sector-wide initiatives, organisational-level changes, as well as actions that could be undertaken within individual workplaces in each of those domains. It is significant that many of these ideas developed through this process take advantage of the workplace and workforce changes created by COVID-19.