A paid civic gap year for New Zealanders

Why not take a percentage (5%?) of the public service roles and make them available for any New Zealander to sign up for a civic gap year. Each year the intake could be demographically balanced, and it could work like a fellowship, where fellows can participate in any policy/service/regulatory area they want to.

This would bring a lot more diversity of ideas and experiences to the service, and would help be a circuit breaker for the resistence to change of long term incumbency. It would also help departments keep it real, and avoid becoming too self reinforcing or self limiting.