Supporting Australian Climate Services and CSIRO

The Australian Climate Service (ACS) was established to better understand the threats posed by climate change and natural hazards, providing support for Disaster Risk Reduction decision-making. Despite existing private-sector data available, governments were unable to comprehensively utilise/reuse the information. Joining ACS and CSIRO, we identified the challenge: data sharing is a complex practice between large organisations, especially considering the impact of climate change on natural disasters. To implement positive change, ACS and CSIRO needed clarity on current data-flows, a knowledge of barriers to growth, and relationships with stakeholders across private and public sectors.

Our team adopted a qualitative approach to understand and engage with key government and private stakeholders across insurance, telecommunications sectors, and land valuation. This enabled stakeholders to better understand the value proposition and barriers within public-private data-sharing. Through interviews, surveys, and literature reviews, we developed a set of resources and tools that helped stakeholders make progress in data-sharing understanding and capabilities for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Data-flow diagrams helped visualise existing systems, while data tables synthesised insurance and telecommunication data. Our report on industry-government data-sharing, combined with multiple workshops, equipped stakeholders with the knowledge, tools and empathy required for change.

With our outputs, decision-makers in the private and public sectors can make sense of a complex environment. They can understand how to get industry to share data to help disaster risk reduction (DRR), and make informed choices to mitigate climate change, avoiding wasted time, effort and investment. Not only was this an inquisition to better understand data, it was also to build connections and foundational relationships between the private and public sectors for DRR. Through collaboration, workshops and active network-building, we established relationships with key industry and public sector stakeholders, encouraging transparent data-sharing relationships in the future.

Throughout this project, we had four stages of impact. First, we established an industry-government working group to co-develop governance arrangements. This helped to drive public-private collaboration, set up the work plan and steer the collective effort. Next, we defined use cases for data exchange and agreed the necessary data, supporting participants to sharpen the focus of initial collaboration efforts and clarify the usage intent. This also helped to confirm the purpose and use of data flowing from industry to government, and to be exchanged by government (and any reciprocal exchange with industry). The definition of use cases helped stakeholders identify the scope of data required and confirm preferred or potential modalities for transfer. With key stakeholders, we co-developed an approach to implementing a system for data exchange between industry-government. The agreed use cases and data scope was supported by a system which enables exchange, the design of which was considered and agreed by the working group members. Finally, we established formal/informal opportunities for knowledge sharing, capacity building and collaboration. This enabled all participants to improve processes for sharing, ensure access is managed appropriately and that stakeholders have the required capability to interpret and use data to reduce risks.