My grandpa was part of CSIRO mostly around researching waterways and their effect on ecosystems and stuff in what must have been the 50s-90s. A rode scholar and beautiful person. Intelligent and compassionate. I’ve always been proud of Australia’s CSIRO. In the last twenty years I’m glad he’s not here to see what they’ve done to it.
It was for a while part of our Australian identity. We were engineers and scientists who make rational well informed decisions with often limited resources and an abundance of ingenuity.
That part of the Australian pride I had seems lost to time.
Although the CSIRO should get all the funding it requires, above some other things we seemingly throw money at. Some of these positions mentioned in the article looking at being reduced aren’t science positions…just HR/management related, in that case I have no issues. Lets fund Science not Managers.
If you want scientists to be able to do science, they need support from admin staff doing admin.
About 65% felt the job cuts would impact CSIRO’s ability to put out good research and support Australian industries.
“Less support staff means more work for an already stretched research workforce,” one anonymised respondent wrote.
I work in a large university with a policy of lumping as many administrative duties on the academics as possible.
Why do we want professors coding credit cards to university accounts, managing employment contracts and job listing’s, offices for staff, travel bookings ect ect? Is this how we want our tax payer grant money spent?
100% this. My large university went through a “business improvement program” as a cost cutting exercise, which basically meant cutting heaps of professional (v academic) staff. Now you have academics not trained in a variety of systems wasting a tonne of time trying to use them/do administrative work that a fully trained professional would have been able to do in a fraction of the time, making much greater use of everybody’s skills and financial resources.
Although I agree with your statement, this needs to be in balance.