Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
Submission by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
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18 July 2008
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) takes this welcome opportunity to contribute to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. In sympathy with the goals of the NCRIS agenda ASSA recognises and supports these guiding principles;
- Collaboration is important not only for the purpose of maximising investment in infrastructure and the efficiencies that can achieve, but also for the complementary goal of providing opportunities for cross-fertilisation between disciplines and sectors where this is desirable.
- It is important to direct research infrastructural investment toward national research priorities, recognising that such priorities need to be reviewed consistently and that contingencies for adjustments to priority schedules need to be provided for less-than-decadal scale eventualities as may arise in the course of national and international affairs.
- Information and communication technologies are vitally important enabling and support mechanisms for research activities across all sectors in the HASS and STEM communities.
- Research collaborations often cross national borders. The need for the sharing of data bases, hardware and facilities should be recognised as opportunities for bi-lateral and multi-lateral research collaborations to emerge. The example set for many years by astronomy is salutary, but not singular. Similar opportunities for international collaboration should be entertained across the research sectors and exploited where advantages can be recognised. We applaud recent changes to ARC funding rules that will encourage such extensions (and capture) of Australian and other-national capacities.
In addition, ASSA conveys its very strong interest in the following expressions and articulations of the strategy and methodology of infrastructural and research collaboration.
- We would like to state our strong support for the separation of the Research Infrastructure, and Transforming Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research capability areas. Research infrastructure extends in meaning to all tools and enabling mechanisms exploited by researchers, no matter how seemingly mundane they may be. Social scientists, humanists, bio-physical scientists and technologists have all benefited beyond measure from institutions that have not similarly benefited in recent years from the public support such bodies enjoy overseas, and once enjoyed in Australia. We point to the constraints on some of our very best repositories of information such as museums, libraries and archives. Australia has wisely invested in these institutions, once the hubs of much collaborative research both nationally and internationally. It should be noted with regard to the objectives of the NCRIS that such 'traditional' research infrastructure facilities are sites of extensive and ongoing cross-capability linkages. We consider that collecting institutions such as the Australian Museum, the National Library and the National Archives, to name only a few, fit the description of Australian Landmark Facilities. In many, if not all of these institutions, research capacity has dwindled. Each of these institutions is a repository, a safe house, for the material objects that many researchers must have in order to conduct meaningful study and thus contribute to national research needs and priorities. The collections our institutions contain are not luxuries, they are the substance by which our commitment to understanding our nation and the wider world is measured. We advocate a Federal-State-industry joint commitment to making best use of investment already provided to these valuable public institutions.
- While recognising that ICT has provided powerful and ever-expanding means for managing data sets and providing the potential for widespread collaboration and easy access, it is our view that much of its capacity is under-used due to the shortage of human researchers and support staff that our universities and other research institutions can provide. Collaboration is essentially conceived as a horizontal 2 activity linking researchers across space, consistently under-appreciates the additional vertical dimension where collaboration between institutions, researchers, their assistants, support staff and the public is recognised and supported, with the notable exception of ICT enhancements for researchers. But ICT support cannot entirely substitute for cooperation, consultation and face-to-face communication between individuals engaged in the research process. We urge the NCRIS team to continue to see the researchers (and their support staff) as the central most important infrastructural element in national strategy.
- Infrastructure planning and implementation is lasting benefit only in
circumstances where a financial capacity exists not only for meeting the ongoing cost
of maintaining, but also improving and enhancing such infrastructure as new
possibilities for its utilisation emerge. A strategic plan such as the 2008 Strategic
Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure will be cogent only in the circumstance
where the cost of maintaining research facilities is explicitly addressed. This is
highlighted by the fact that, in a sector whose evaluation and funding mechanisms are
in a state of flux, Universities have found it necessary to defer maintenance in order
to meet their program needs. The reported bill for deferred maintenance in 2005 in
Australian Universities was $1.5 billion1; estimates for current cost deferred
maintenance now range as high as $2 billion.2 In light of an unmet maintenance
liability - for one portion of the broader research sector - which is now as much as four
times the size of the initial allocation of $542 million to the NCRIS, meeting the
long term cost of new infrastructure initiatives becomes crucial. We note that
planning which takes account of the "full lifecycle costs within institutions and
nationally" was cited by the Review of the 2006 Roadmap was cited as a challenge for
the future. We note further that one of the stated principles underpinning the NCRIS
is the acknowledgement that:
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Due regard be given to the whole-of-life costs of major infrastructure, with funding
available for the operational costs where appropriate.
This Academy recognises and congratulates the government for the ambitious aspirations that comprise the NCRIS Exposure Draft and Roadmap. Given the breadth and complexity of the ambitions for collaboration and infrastructure efficiencies we encourage fresh, energetic and perhaps even radical Federal-State-industry collaborations to achieve the NCIRS goals. The Social Sciences have robust interests in matters relating to secure, productive and trusting societies and in this regard we see opportunities for institutional, research and infrastructural collaborations to contribute effectively to that public good.
- Australia's immense coastline and increased marine economic zone, managed with scarce and precious human/infrastructural resources, demand radically restructured infrastructural-collaborative relationships to ensure the health and security of these zones. We see justification for stronger collaborations between, for instance, the Australian Navy, acting more as a coast-guard, but also in collaboration with marine scientists, immigration interests and others to achieve more effective better bio-security and fairer human security through fundamental research.
- ASSA sees the opportunity to build trust in Australia's institutions through such research activities as the current ASSA-Australian Bureau of Statistics collaboration to provide accessible accounts of life in Australia based on ABS data, stories that provide the population with an understanding of one of the values of ABS census data. This sort of contribution requires the kind of easy access to massive data bases that the ABS has generously provided to scholars who will turn numbers into meaningful text. The relatively small investment for the return such a project delivers is a working example of the collaboration of smaller players in utilising large scale infrastructure resources to produce research outcomes. The 2008 NCRIS Roadmap in identifies the enabling of access and utilisation of research infrastructure by smaller players as a key area in future program implementation: This ASSA-ABS collaboration highlights the need for the means of access and utilisation of infrastructure by smaller players to be taken into account in strategic planning for Australia's research infrastructure.
- ASSA recognises the correlation between the size of research objectives and the need for breadth in research abilities that must be brought to bear on problems great magnitude and national importance. We urge the NCRIS to consider such collaborations as the National Academies Forum as not simply joint activities, but as pieces of infrastructure shared potentially by nearly two thousand of Australia most accomplished academics, and through them their contacts and institutions. Such associations engage the most valuable and fundamental elements of research, the researchers. Providing for the opportunities for Learned Academy collaborations is a comparatively very inexpensive and poorly utilised aspect of national infrastructure.
The Academy also recognises the need for a well balanced and simultaneous commitment to support for basic material infrastructure, human resources, collaboration incentives, ICT enhancements and other components of the NCRIS. Each contributing element of the NCIRS will have best effect if it leverages and complements other elements in scale and pace of development. Astute oganisational oversight and continuous dialogue among contributing organisations and individuals will assist that process. Thus, we feel a well coordinated consistent effort, however that is to be managed, is a critical necessity.
18 July 2008
Footnotes
- DEST, 2006, Response to the Productivity Commission's Draft Research Report on Science and Innovation
- The Australian, 16 July 2008
Last modified: 2 November 2009.