West Australians finally got some details last week on the costs so far of a major overhaul of WA's public sector — but it didn't take long for the State Government to go into an apparent lockdown on the release of further information.

The details became public after the ABC put questions to the Public Sector Commission (PSC), the Government agency handling some of the reforms.

It provided information about more than $5 million in taxpayers' money being handed to 18 highly paid public servants who were departing.

That included two who walked away with "compensation payouts" — not including leave and other entitlements — of more than $400,000.

The PSC also confirmed a further 21 senior bureaucrats were in limbo as the changes continued to roll out, with some of these expected to depart at some point at further cost to taxpayers.

The newsworthiness of this is not that these bureaucrats are getting payouts, to which they are contractually and legally entitled, but the fact the Government has long argued its reforms were about delivering savings.

The available information on the reform process is scant, with the Government continuing to either refuse or be unable to provide details of the short-term costs involved, the number of jobs which would go and a timeframe for completion.

Instead, a spokesman for Acting Premier Roger Cook said this week the "range of public sector reforms were anticipated to save hundreds of millions of dollars".

Mr Cook said taxpayers would also benefit from the overhaul because they would make the public service more efficient.

"There is a certain amount of expense that goes with reducing the number of senior executive service public servants," he said.

"These are highly paid public servants."

A couple of days later, the ABC got a tip that a number of highly paid personnel from the WA Police were leaving with big payouts too, but these were not included on the PSC's list.

Police payouts 'not part of reforms'

After questions from the ABC, WA Police confirmed 12 employees had accepted offers of voluntary redundancy at a cost of more than $3.2 million.

The Government says the police redundancies are not part of its public sector reforms. ( ABC: Adam Haynes )

A WA Police spokeswoman said the offers were made "in line with the Government's reform direction to reduce Senior Executive Service (SES) positions".

That conceivably brought the known cost to taxpayers so far to more than $8 million.

But the Premier's office appeared to take issue with what WA Police had told the ABC, and a spokesman said those voluntary redundancies were "not part of the reforms" the Government announced in April.

Those changes include slashing the number of government departments by 40 per cent and reducing the number of SES positions by 20 per cent.

In an effort to find out more, the ABC contacted the many departments and agencies being merged into super departments to find out if any other bureaucrats were going and if any other payouts had been made.

Departments shtum as Premier's office responds

Word that emailed media queries had been made by the ABC to departments quickly made its way to the Premier's Office — and it prompted a swift response.

Within a couple of hours, departments — which strive to be apolitical — started to inform the ABC that rather than answering the queries, a response would be "provided by the Premier's office".

A short time later, an email arrived from Mr McGowan's office providing a "whole-of-government" response.

It appeared the departments were directed by the Premier's office not to respond to the ABC's questions, though they refused say whether that was the case.

The Premier's spokesman said there was "currently no new voluntary redundancy scheme", but the reforms being implemented by the Government were about driving real change across government.

"Inevitably there will be public sector job losses over time, these will include some redundancies and other changes including redeployment or natural attrition," the spokesman said.

"Reforming the public sector is a big task, but it is desperately needed to help fix the financial mess and dysfunction left behind by the previous government."

For obvious reasons, no Government department could have provided a line like that.

What about McGowan's transparency mantra?

Both in Opposition and since winning office, Premier Mark McGowan has made much of the need for open and transparent government.

The Premier's office emailed a "whole-of-government" response to the ABC's inquiries. ( ABC News: Eliza Laschon )

In May last year, when Mr McGowan was opposition leader, he promised to set up a commission of inquiry — something he has since done — to blow the lid on the Barnett government's contractual deals to find out "where the money went".

Mr McGowan also often bemoaned the "secrecy" of the Barnett regime.

"We need to know what condition the finances are in and we need to ensure future governments don't make the mistakes of this government," he said at the time.

"The public interest must come first, transparency must come first, openness must come first."

Shortly after his Government won office, he said it had acted with a "gold standard" of transparency in relation to the release of information about the ongoing lead contamination issue in the water at the new Perth Children's Hospital.

It is easy and politically advantageous for new governments to release information that damages the outgoing government.

It is much harder to release information that may damage your own.

It will be interesting to watch just how much transparency and openness the Government allows on its public sector changes — including the true costs to taxpayers — as the reform process continues.