Governance & Resources

Organisation of the ADA

The ADA staff comprises 8 staff members at time of submission, with a total of 7.05 FTE:

• Director
• Technical Manager
• Software developer
• Senior data access officer
• Data access officer (part time)
• Archive Manager
• Data archivists (x2)

ADA staff are organised into three groups within the archive – Data Access, Data Archiving, and Technical.

The ADA director reports directly to the Director of POLIS, the administrative organisational unit in the ANU that provides ADA’s organisational home. As part of an established ANU Centre, ADA is governed by the ANU’s Policy on Centres and Institutes (https://policies.anu.edu.au/ppl/document/ANUP_012009). This includes governance through the POLIS Executive Management Committee (https://csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/people/management-committee) that provides oversight and independent advice on POLIS’s objectives and progress.

In addition to ADA staff, additional IT functions are provided by two ADA outsource partners:

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) is Australia’s preeminent computing facility, delivering on the critical national need for high-performance data, storage, and computing services. NCI provides compute, storage and network infrastructure for the ADA, and is supported by a team of over 70 staff, funded through Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

The Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Incorporated ([ https://www.acspri.org.au/ ACSPRI]) provides development operations support for the ADA on a contractual basis. ACSPRI and ADA have a long term collaboration dating back to the establishment of both organisations in 1981.

Timescale

The ADA is core funded on an ongoing basis by the Australian National University (ANU), primarily through the National Institutes Grant provided directly to the ANU by the Australian federal government (https://policies.anu.edu.au/ppl/document/ANUP_018016 ). This funding has been supporting ANU since it’s establishment in 1981. Core funding is then supplemented by project grant funding from a variety of sources. In the last 10 years, this has included funding through the Australian Research Council, Australian Research Data Commons, Horizon Europe (European Commission) and contract research with government agencies and other external partners.

Demonstrate that the repository can meet its obligations

ADA’s staffing and infrastructure support has enabled the operation of the archive for over 40 years. The continuing operations of the archive will continue to focus on including a breadth of funding sources to supplement the ANU core funding, and use of outsourcing partners to support core archive staff to provide relevant operational functions. As ADA’s budget is part of the overall ANU corporate budget, there is no separate documentation of the ADA’s budget that can be provided. However, while no funding is ever certain, it is our expectation that this strategy will continue to provide a sound basis for ADA operations into the foreseeable future, based on our 40 years of continuous operation.