Finance dept uses 'surge' technique

A crack squad of public servants within the Finance Department will be "surged" when it comes time to complete the budget.

Finance Department secretary Jane Halton told a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday the "surge" capacity had been created to deal with significant peaks in workload.

"We need to be able deploy resourcing flexibly ... (but) it's not a pool of people sitting somewhere waiting to surge," Ms Halton told the committee.