Gazetted Vacancy

Ongoing National Office, Woden
- APS 5 $80,789 - $86,277
- Ian Byron 02 61462779

**About the Stream, Group or Branch**:
The Data and Evaluation Group within the department’s Social Security Stream leads the department’s centralised data and analytic capability, with a focus on enabling policy areas to use evidence to support informed decision-making. The Data Strategy Branch has responsibility for longitudinal studies, policy modelling, actuarial analysis, and data policy and governance.

The Policy Modelling Unit (PMU) is seeking enthusiastic individuals from a range of backgrounds with curiosity and a willingness to learn. The PMU performs analysis of income support payments to assist policy makers in developing new policies, analysing current policy settings and anticipating future policy issues.

**Position Description**:
The unit’s responsibilities include:

- providing advice on policies affecting income support, family and child care assistance, including costs, distributional impacts and interactions between payments and with the personal income tax system using the Policy Evaluation Model (PoEM)
- analysing individual and family circumstances and effective marginal tax rates (EMTR) to assist policy development and decision making
- development of a medium-term income support population projection model (the Transfer Payment Over Time model) to inform policy analysis, identify trends and develop capacity to perform costings beyond the forward estimates in the future
- maintenance and development of the microsimulation model PoEM to provide to Commonwealth agencies for use in costing
- development of ad-hoc tools and provide advice on policy analysis options outside of existing models.

This role presents a unique opportunity for those with or without modelling experience to develop analytical and technical skills in a supportive team environment. The unit places an emphasis on staff development and offers flexibility to try different tasks, work on multiple models and across reporting lines to build experience.

Our work contains a variety of urgent tasks and longer projects that require time management skills, good judgement and strategic thinking. You will have the opportunity to be involved in high profile work, including contributing to costing and analysing impacts of new policy proposals. The team regularly works with and provides assistance to central agencies. Experience in the PMU will prove highly valuable for future roles in policy, research, modelling and data analysis.
- strong conceptual, problem solving, and analytical skills
- curiosity and willingness to learn
- good judgement and the ability to understand complex problems
- experience in, or desire to learn, software packages such as SAS, R and SQL
- understanding of, or interest in, payments policy.

Your responsibilities may include:
Development and/or maintenance of payment focussed models which could involve:

- coding policy rules in accordance with legislation
- analysis of historical data to inform projections
- preparing base data - data extraction, variable imputation, utilising ageing and weighting techniques
- projection of payment rates and thresholds according to legislated rules
- development/maintenance of interfaces for displaying model outputs
- presentations to stakeholders on models and/or analysis.

Undertaking costings and analysis of new policy proposals which could involve:

- interpreting existing policy legislation and discussions with policy experts in order to understand the new policy proposal and its possible interaction with existing policies
- liaison with external agencies, policy teams and Budget area
- re-coding payment rules and/or changes to rates and threshold parameters in costing models
- preparation of costing and analysis notes.

**Eligibility / Additional Requirements**:
This recruitment process is being used to fill current and future ongoing and non-ongoing vacancies. A merit pool of suitable applicants will be created which may be used to fill future vacancies should they become available over the next 18 months.

Non-ongoing vacancies will be offered for a period of up to 18 months with the possibility of extension (up to a total period of 3 years). Some of these non-ongoing vacancies may become ongoing in the next 18 months.

Should a position become ongoing then the merit pool established through this selection process may be used to fill the vacancy on an ongoing basis.To be eligible for employment with Department of Social Services (the department), you must be an Australian citizen. An applicant's suitability for employment with the Department will be assessed through a pre-employment screening process. This will include an identity and criminal history background check.

**Eligibility to obtain an Australian Government Security Clearance**:
The suitable applicant must also obtain and maintain a security clearance conducted by the Australian Government Security Vetting Agenc