The demand for cutting-edge digital infrastructure capabilities for research and innovation continues to grow and has been reaffirmed as a priority for investment in the latest National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Roadmap.
The QCIF Strategic Plan 2023–2025 reiterates its focus on Members. Together with our partners, we look to align QCIF’s efforts with Member research priorities and emerging industry sectors to maximise research excellence, translation, and societal impact.
Our Plan captures three core objectives to be enabled by specific strategies:
- Ensure operational sustainability with capacity for strategic investment:
- Alignment of QCIF efforts with Member research priorities — we will continue to strengthen engagement with our Members. Under the ethos of continuous improvement, we will proactively assess our performance and effectively convey our value to Members.
- Align strategy with funding model and service offerings — in a sector with finite resources, QCIF will develop a new funding model that is transparent, equitable and allows for strategic investment. In recognition of the divergent needs of our Members, we will have a greater range and flexibility of service offerings to Members.
- Enhance revenue margins of QCIF’s enterprise digital solutions in support of establishing capacity for strategic investment and growth.
- Acquire, facilitate access to, develop, and manage world-class digital research infrastructure capabilities:
- Proactive pursuit of external project funding — we will engage with Members and partners to leverage competitive grant opportunities. Similarly, we will look to work with industry/SME clients to develop commercial opportunities.
- Develop new capabilities and sector applications — we see new opportunities in Agriculture, Defence, Humanities & Social Sciences, for example. QCIF will look to engage the research communities and stakeholders in consideration of future capability offerings/roadmaps, including QCIF facilitating access to and/or hosting government-held datasets.
- Facilitate access to Member-based digital research infrastructure capabilities — in the spirit of ‘Team QLD’, we will identify and leverage complementarity of digital research infrastructure capabilities found within our Members.
- Attract new and retain QCIF talent — our people are the foundation of QCIF. We will look to secure longer-term contracts for QCIF talent; build a pipeline of new talent; provide a clear career advancement pathway; and ensure explicit acknowledgment of QCIF staff contributions.
- Train and develop skills within researchers — whether it is programming languages, use of statistical packages or broader digital literacy, there is ongoing need and demand for upskilling current and future researchers and innovators. We will continue to monitor the emerging needs of our Members to deliver new training and skills development courses, including the delivery of a coordinated QCIF Internship Program in consideration of the Commonwealth Government’s Research Training Program industry-based weighting.
- Enhance business operations to derive efficiencies and minimise company risks:
- Develop, update and deploy a suite of policies and procedures and adopt enterprise software systems for enhanced effectiveness and efficiencies in business operations and mitigate current and emerging risks to QCIF Ltd.
