In a school playground, a parent was using the term "EL2" as a verb. As in "she EL2ed me". The mother was sniping about how another parent had handled a squabble between students.

The verb appears to mean to approach a problem in an unnecessarily complicated manner, ensuring that a consensus is reached for every tiny step along the way. To be officious yet also inclusive.

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In the schoolyard example, the mother's "EL2ing" consisted of gathering together all the relevant stakeholders - children, adults and a few others who had better things to do but couldn't think of a polite way to get out of it - and saying words to the effect of: "OK, let's just unpack what happened in the playground and discuss together what we all think it could mean."

We'd be fascinated to hear from readers how widespread this lexicon is. Are there equivalent verbs elsewhere on the classification scale? Can one "EL1" another? And what would it mean to "SES" someone? Email your thoughts to psi.editor@canberratimes.com.au or tweet to @PSInformant.

Executive-level shrink or stasis?

Speaking of EL2s, it's worth revisiting the Gillard government's pledge to trim the ranks of the bureaucracy's middle managers. In the 2013 budget, then finance minister Penny Wong said she would save $150 million through "better management of staff numbers", targeting EL1s, EL2s and the senior executive service. The Coalition also backed the approach (but promised, of course, to cut harder and faster).

Four years and two governments later, what has happened? The Public Service Commission released its latest workforce data last week, so we can check.

This graph shows the classification profile of the APS workforce (the columns), while the line shows whether each job level grew or shrank over the past four years.

Yes, the bureaucracy's middle-management layer is far smaller today than in 2013 (indeed, the APS as a whole has 14,050 fewer staff).

Yet did those cuts target the intended levels? Not really. In 2013, EL ranks made up 27.6 per cent of the workforce. Today, they make up 27 per cent. As for the SES, they comprised 1.9 per cent of staff four years ago and 2.1 per cent today.

In short, a lot of effort for effectively no change in the workforce profile at all.

'No patterns here'

Finally, a right of reply for Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd, who took exception to an article in last month's Informant. That article, by legal columnist John Wilson, suggested that, "in all but name, the government often engages in pattern bargaining during the enterprise bargaining process, seeking common terms for distinct enterprise agreements across agencies" - which is illegal.

Despite this, Wilson wrote, if a sacked public servant sought to be reinstated, government agencies resisted "on the grounds that doing so would be disruptive to the workplace". "If the Commonwealth is just one legal entity, why can't the unfairly dismissed public servant be reinstated to another department? This issue has arisen in the Fair Work Commission on occasion, and there are no prizes for guessing the position adopted by the Commonwealth when the shoe is on the other foot."

However, Lloyd warns that the article is "potentially misleading", saying there is no pattern bargaining in the APS. The Fair Work Act says pattern bargaining happens when two or more employers are involved in particular bargaining practices. Yet there is only one APS employer: the Commonwealth.

"Bargaining in the APS has occurred at the agency level for more than 15 years," Lloyd writes. "Agencies are responsible for negotiating enterprise agreements which suit their operations, within a policy framework.

"It is not uncommon for large employers to have a governance framework in place which influences bargaining arrangements across distinct operational groups within the employer's purview. For example, I understand this is the approach taken in organisations like Qantas, the large banks and retailers. For an employer with operations as diverse and complex as the APS, it is appropriate for the Commonwealth to bargain enterprise agreements in this way."