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Department of Home Affairs

  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Sam Gibbons

6.20 AM

Wake up and get ready for the day. Over breakfast, I will often read a book or check over my personal emails.  

7.30 AM

Time to leave the house and start the commute across the city to work. This generally takes about 40min. To fill the time on the bus I will often ready my book or listen to music to help me get in the right zone for another day of work.  

8.30 AM

Arrive at work and head up to my desk where the first thing to do is check my emails and the emails of the team’s many group emails. As an area that looks after some of the Department’s overseas Posted officers we often have emails come in overnight or urgent international briefing requests. I will respond to those that I can and forward the briefing requests to the relevant team member. 

9.30 AM

Time for a trip down to the café with other Grads in the Division. This is a good chance to catch up with the other Grads in the same work area to find out how they are and stay in touch.  

10.00 AM

Weekly capacity building team meeting. At these meetings, we discuss our priorities for the next week and the status of activities that we are currently providing support on. While our Posted officers will deliver the capacity building activities, we in Canberra provide logistical support and handle the procurement process.   

10.30 AM

Some time at my desk to deal with ongoing tasks such as the completion of the paperwork required for the running of a capacity-building activity. This can include the project charter, the creation and approval of contracts and delegate approval to spend the money. Once this is all approved and ready to go it must be sent to various financial subject matter areas of the Department for final approval and processing.  

11.30 AM

A meeting of a procurement panel to discuss three responses to a tender that we are running for one of our overseas activities. In this meeting, each member of the panel will discuss the pros and cons of each of the responses and come to a decision on the response that is the best value for money for what we would like to the activity to look like and achieve.  

12.00 PM

Finalisation of the Weekly Key Issues Brief for sending to the Branch Head. This brief provides the Branch Head with information about our work priorities for the week ahead, the location of the team and Posted officers and any activities of note.  

12.30 PM

Time for lunch. As part of the largest Graduate cohort the Department has ever had, it is very easy to arrange to get together with other Graduates for lunch at the picnic tables outside of the building. It is a great chance to stay in touch and see how everyone is doing and what the work is like in other parts of the Department.  

2.00 PM

I have to allocate part of my time to help keep track of the Budget for our capacity building program. This requires downloading the previous period’s spending off our systems and updating our spreadsheets that contain the budgetary information. It is a necessary task that is very methodical but a good opportunity to work at a slower pace during the post-lunch slump.  

3.30 PM

Due to the time differences between us and our Posted Officers mid-afternoon is one of the rare periods that both locations are online. Therefore, this part of my day is often taken up by teleconferences with our Posted officers. This can be a planned weekly catch up where we discuss the program of work and the status of all projects. Or it can be to discuss a specific matter or activity.

 4.00 PM

The rest of the afternoon is spent finalising any work that needs to be completed for the day or getting requests out to our Posted Officers so that they have Canberra’s overnight to respond.

5.00 PM

Time to start the journey home. I use this journey to listen to music or read a book and wind down from a long day work so that any work-related issues do not bleed into my home life.

day-in-a-life-department-of-home-affairs -sam-gibbons-dancing

6.00 PM

My evenings are never dull! Depending on the day I can either by found at the gym, at Scouts (where I am a youth participant as a Rover) or at Ceroc Dance rehearsal. On the rare free afternoons, I can also be found spending time with my friends.

10.00 PM

I am in bed and spend some time reading before turning out the lights to rest up for another busy day.