The public service's ''redeployment register'' has tripled since late last year, and now holds the names of 427 departmental staffers cast into bureaucratic purgatory by federal government cuts.

A worker can join the registry, which covers all Australian Public Service departments and agencies, if their department has declared their job excess but the employee refuses to take a redundancy package.

There are no provisions to force a severance agreement on a public servant, even if their job has been abolished.

It is unclear what the hundreds of ''displaced persons'' are doing when they go to work each day because individual departments are left to manage their own excess workers.

A spokeswoman for the Public Service Commission confirmed on Monday that ''home agencies'' were responsible for finding work for public servants on the register.

At least two agencies, the Health Department and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, have formed ''Business Service Centres'' in an effort to keep their excess public servants busy while they try to find them jobs in their own departments or in the broader public service. The ABS in Canberra said its centre, formed in July, had been successful in placing ''unfunded'' workers in new jobs.