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A new National Research Infrastructure Roadmap is due next year and the Department of Education is asking for input on five priority areas that emerged from a survey on what the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy should do next.
Workforce
DoE states the infrastructure research community recognises a need for a “cultural shift” in supporting staff, including a sector-wide approach to career development and job security. It asks what critical skills NRI staff need ex their technical expertise. Perhaps they should have asked the NCRIS institution directors who proposed in 2022 “a simple, fit-for-purpose classification for RI specialist roles … such as by creating a new job-family.”
Translation
There is “an opportunity to further emphasise the benefits anticipated from greater engagement between Australia’s NRI capabilities and the nation’s industry sector.”
The problems are, “the location and potential benefits of many facilities may not be visible or known beyond a relatively small group of industry users in any one jurisdiction.”
Gosh, who would have thunk it? Probably the consultant who concluded in 2017 that it was “time to sign a light on NCRIS,” which directors got around to in 2024 with content on what institutions do posted to the Research Infrastructure Connected site. Just not a bright light.
New Kit
Officials also asked what people wanted and received “a wide range of responses” from costed proposals to ideas that NRI could not cover. As to what could get-up there is a sort-of- maybe nod for the ideas used as examples:
- Biobanking infrastructure: “consolidating existing and new biological samples, genomic and phenotypic data, health records and environmental data”
- An “integrated atmospheric composition observing facility”
- A “residential facility” for “mathematical sciences infrastructure”
- Plus, there are five examples of translational research infrastructures, including, “a distributed quantum device testbed to allow industry access to quantum characterisation tools for novel materials”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge systems
DoE reports two general responses, one for a dedicated research data commons capability, the other for a “capability uplift” across the NRI for “collaborative integration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Western knowledges.”
Humanities
“Cultural collections are central to humanities research (but) national collections are siloed across disciplines, geography, culture jurisdiction and material classification.” So apparently having decided to do something the question is what, with DoE asking, for three investment priorities, three new/emerging humanities research areas and for a choice between developing, a “specialist humanities research infrastructure workforce or a generalist research infrastructure workforce with humanities domain expertise”