Edith Cowan University

Response:

The advisory body should be quadripartite by including education providers as permanent representatives, rather than, as proposed, as one or more independent experts across a range of interests including education.

It will be important to establish detailed terms of reference for the advisory body’s role and for the selection of permanent representatives and independent experts.

All information and advice provided by permanent representatives and independent experts must be consensus-based, i.e., as the result of wide consultation within members’ networks.

Clarity is needed as to the working relationship between Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) and Federal government departments. The extent to which the JSA is advisory or directorial in its dealings with other parts of government needs to be defined.

Response:

The principles guiding JSA priorities should be broad and must include independence, agility, rational-inquiry, and transparency in all decision-making and actions. 

While the Discussion Paper says (p.7) “Jobs and Skills Australia will take an economy-wide approach”, this fails to acknowledge that there is no single economy or labour market operating in Australia, but a range of diverse markets each with their own characteristics. The multiple economies and labour markets operating in Australia must be separately considered in JSA analyses if this work is to be of real value. 

Early decisions about the scope of the JSA workplan and the extent of use of internal and external resources (researchers and consultants) are needed. 

In addition, the JSA should undertake monitoring of international trends and developments, as context for its work.

Response:

Consultations with existing higher education sector peer groups, such as Universities Australia, the Australian Network of University Planners (ANUP) and the Australasian Association of Institutional Researchers (AAIR) would provide valuable input to the development of the workplan.

Objectives for the JSA should align to those of similar government entities overseas, to encourage close relationships and exchange of ideas that allow the workplan to remain relevant from both a national and international perspective.

Response:

By working in authentic and trusted partnerships to ensure that studies are well designed, implemented, monitored and evaluated. These partnerships should include international institutions, where relevant.

Response:

JSA needs to develop ways to curate datasets on education and training course curricula, using existing central collections, such as the NCVER (for VET providers) and TCSI (for higher education providers). Edith Cowan University is currently engaged with JSA on a proof of concept for identifying and codifying skills information in curricula.

JSA should work with the Australian Bureau of Statistics to develop complete and comprehensive employment datasets, that include digital employment offshore. ASCED coding needs to be reviewed as it is at the core of many of the datasets of interest, but is not contemporary (last issued in 2001). In contrast, the recent review and update of ANZSCO coding has been helpful.

A stronger evidence base, building on insights from national and international research, would be valuable. This needs to be more than a one-off literature review: JSA should consider ways to build lasting connections with expert researchers, so that contemporary research continues to inform the JSA’s work. 

Response:

By creating an open online workspace for genuine collaboration on issues where expertise is sought. Consideration should be given to engagement with overseas stakeholders, as well as established institutions and expert researchers.

Response:

Visibility and accessibility of JSA products, information and evaluations is crucial. The approach should align with Australia’s Open Science agenda. 

Communications that specifically and effectively target each key stakeholder group are needed. Simple guides for consumption by the general public and the news media are also required. The general public and news media should be recognised as stakeholders, and news media needs to be recognised as an important communication channel in its own right.

The JSA needs to establish a position as the single and definitive source of trusted information and advice on jobs and skills. The previous multi-channel approach with State and Federal government agencies and the former National Skills Commission was ineffective.

JSA should consider developing and promoting national “headline numbers” and quarterly data trends and insights at a state/ territory level. These could be published alongside the ABS general labour statistics.

Response:

Data and data analysis products must be open, accessible, relevant, current and specific. Release dates for standard reports and forecasts must be publicised and met.

The JSA should create a portal (secured through APIs) where web-based dashboards can be accessed, and raw (or highly detailed) data can be downloaded.

JSA should provide detailed datasets to specialist users, beyond the usual data releases to the public. This would negate the need for these specialist users to JSA replicate data, potentially at lower levels of granularity, or with the additional costs of subscribing to data provider services used by the JSA.
 
The JSA should consider facilitating data sharing arrangements with researchers and providing an avenue for researchers to submit their research findings (as working papers or pre-prints) from the analysis of JSA data. Over time, a knowledge base would build from these works that would include secondary derived datasets. 

Response:

Early consideration needs to be given to how to improve the quality and utility of existing datasets and what new datasets might be needed. Possible areas for improvement include a new skills taxonomy, contemporary standards for education discipline coding (ASCED), and data dictionaries that define the included and excluded elements for all fields.

The JSA should consider recommending good practice standards for the quality of information that is included in job advertisements. For example, currently, salary information is absent or ambiguous in most job advertisements outside of the public sector.