It’s an article of research-establishment faith that expensive kit can transform the economy – all it takes is more planning.
This has been reaffirmed in the exposure draft for the next national research infrastructure roadmap.
“There is broad agreement for a greater focus on translation, including improving industry engagement with and use of research infrastructure. Incremental progress to harness opportunities in research infrastructure provision has been made. Larger-scale solutions, including solutions sensitive to the unique needs of industry, researchers and public-good users, will benefit from dedicated initiatives,” the paper says.
And while it is but a discussion paper, what looks a sure thing is that research infrastructure will be “integrated” with “priority industrial capabilities” and “guided” by the National Resilience and Science Council, (that’s the new peak policy committee to “better coordinate and align public innovation investments with Australia’s economic objectives.”)
There is a great detail of very detailed detail in the paper, released Monday, on what infrastructure investing must accomplish. The context is clear; “urgent strategic investment is needed to safeguard Australia’s control of its sovereign data and technological autonomy and hence preserve and strengthen national capacity for critical decision-making.”
“There is broad agreement for a greater focus on translation, including improving industry engagement with and use of research infrastructure. Incremental progress to harness opportunities in research infrastructure provision has been made. Larger-scale solutions, including solutions sensitive to the unique needs of industry, researchers and public-good users, will benefit from dedicated initiatives.”
The plan sets out six priority areas:
- Productive Australia: “a national network of shared translation and innovation infrastructure could achieve substantial agricultural productivity growth without proportional increases in water, land or fertiliser use, thereby directly contributing to Australia’s food security, regional security and resilience”
- Indigenous knowledge systems: “supporting self-determination, cultural authority, and equitable participation across research and data ecosystems”
- Health: aligning with the National Health and Medical Research Council strategy
- Environment: “providing essential modelling, compute, observation, data, collections and biological capabilities”
- Net Zero 2050: Earth system modelling, renewable energy testing, synthetic biology for carbon-neutral materials, and carbon capture/storage testing. Support discovery and development of Australia’s critical minerals, groundwater and clean energy resources to enable a sovereign advanced manufacturing value chain.
- National security and resilience: cyber-protection, sovereign tech resources for high priority research
And it specifies seven “key areas for action across “the research collections ecosystem:”
- Mechanisms for setting and coordinating priorities
- Identifying priority data collections
- “Governance frameworks that appropriately balance Indigenous Data Sovereignty,
- “Community authority, disciplinary practices and open research principles”
- “Addressing cultural, institutional and policy barriers that impede collaboration, integration and access”
- “Enhancing standards, classifications, metadata frameworks and enabling technologies’
- Support for digitisation, preservation and curation.