Public Sector Bridges Program

The Challenge

Our Public Sector Bridges program targets scenarios where specialised access for researchers to public sector data requires more than the baseline availability or management from the public sector data custodian. Projects in the Public Sector Bridges program extend or improve public sector data to better support leading-edge research.

The Approach

We’ve taken a 2-stage approach to making investments in the Public Sector Bridges program:

• expressions of interest (EOI) — to elicit preliminary ideas for the program, and to identify potential collaborations between public sector departments/agencies, researchers and research organisations
• request for proposals (RFP) — a competitive call open to those who submitted a successful EOI, and their collaborators.

Proposals could apply for up to 2.5 years of investment, with the ARDC investing up to $350,000 in each successful project.

In-scope activities for projects in this program included:

• implementing research sector-compatible data standards
• extending collection coverage for research sector needs
• developing programmatic access interfaces for the research sector
• establishing new governance, policy and access arrangements
• connecting public sector data with research infrastructure, analytical tools, platforms and modelling environments
• planning for and monitoring research use and broader impacts.

Collaboration

Project proposals were accepted from:

• research institutes such as universities, National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Investment Strategy facilities, publicly funded research organisations and medical research institutes
• public sector departments and agencies that were mentioned either in APS agency listing or Australian Government Organisations Register.

The ARDC Public Sector Bridges program is one of 6 programs that form the ARDC’s National Data Assets initiative.

Target Outcomes

This program will produce high-value data assets — in many cases bringing together and harmonising cross-jurisdictional data — and making them available for use by Australian researchers.