Atlas of Living Australia <http://www.ala.org.au>

Setting priorities for the Atlas of Living Australia

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA, http://www.ala.org.au/) is an ambitious attempt to provide tools and services to organise all available information on all Australian species for the benefit of all user groups.  Clearly these ambitions cannot all be achieved at once. 

The ALA therefore has two alternatives.  The project could simply work with whatever materials come to hand and to integrate them in a relatively ad hoc manner.  Alternatively the ALA may determine to deliver certain specific products with identified impact, merit and significance, and work with its partners to produce these as its first priority. 

This latter approach will inevitably mean that the ALA will initially focus on taxa, regions, themes or tools which may be of more interest to some of the partners than others.  However this is the only way to ensure that the project does indeed deliver some outputs of sufficient impact to allow us to argue for ongoing funding beyond 2011. Demonstrating the value of integrated biodiversity data in some key areas will be the best way to justify the need for integrated biodiversity data across all areas.

For this reason, the ALA has commissioned the development of three reports:

• A survey of Australian natural history collections to gain a better overview of some of the resources which could be digitised to provide data for particular taxonomic groups or to meet particular needs (http://www.ala.org.au/docs/ALA_Collection_audit.xls).
• A survey of software components and tools which could be exploited by the ALA in its work (http://www.ala.org.au/tools/tools-survey.html).  
• A user needs analysis to gain a better understanding of the uses to which biodiversity information is being put today in Australia and of the key needs which the ALA may be able to address (http://www.ala.org.au/documents/user-needs-analysis-report.html).

These three reports are now available and provide the raw materials for the ALA to set priorities for its work over the next few years.  The ALA Management Committee has decided on the following process to decide these priorities:

1. To circulate a call to ALA partners to solicit  feedback and recommendations for projects which the ALA could undertake, or with which the ALA could collaborate, to exploit available resources (data, tools and personnel) and address some of the needs identified in the user needs analysis.
2. To establish a small working group including key figures selected to represent the diverse communities supporting the work of the ALA.  This working group will review all project recommendations in the light of available resources, the user needs analysis and the selection criteria outlined below.  They will then recommend a set of complementary priorities for the ALA to seek to deliver by the end of the current block of NCRIS funding (June 2011).

No participant will be prevented from contributing to the ALA in ways unrelated to the selected priority projects. However we trust that there will be a shared understanding of the importance of delivering some visible outcomes and that participants will therefore support these priorities in whatever ways they can, through contribution of content and expertise and through promoting involvement by other groups in these projects.

The working group tasked to select priority projects will evaluate possible combinations of projects with the aim of meeting the following criteria:

1. The set of selected projects must be realistically achievable within the available funds and other constraints before the end of June 2011.
2. The set of selected projects must include scope for significant visible deliverables before the end of June 2010.
3. The set of selected projects must include at least one zoological and at least one botanical project.
4. The set of selected projects should include at least one deliverable to which each of the existing ALA participants and peak bodies can contribute.
5. The set of selected projects must include at least one deliverable providing information on an iconic group of organisms of interest to the general public.
6. The set of selected projects must include deliverables which demonstrate significant benefits (i.e. benefits acknowledged by practitioners in the area concerned, e.g. quarantine officers in the case of the biosecurity area) in addressing the requirements identified by the user needs analysis in at least two of these key areas (see Recommendations in the ALA user needs analysis document):
7. 1. Identification
   2. Site assessment
   3. Habitat management planning
   4. Biosecurity
   5. Sensitive data
   6. Names
8. The set of selected projects must include deliverables which demonstrate identifiable benefits (i.e. benefits which can clearly be articulated in response to the user needs analysis) in addressing the requirements identified by the user needs analysis in at least four of these areas:
9. 1. Identification
   2. Site assessment
   3. Habitat management planning
   4. Managing reference
   5. Community engagement
   6. Fact-finding
   7. Synecology / food-web analysis
   8. Biosecurity
   9. Amateur observations and ad hoc data
   10. Sensitive data
   11. Names
10. The set of selected projects must include activities which contribute to Australia’s delivery to international biodiversity information management projects such as GBIF, EOL, OBIS, GEOSS and the CBD.

Please think about these questions and send us your thoughts (to atlasoflivingaustralia@csiro.au) before 28 February 2009.  We would like your suggestions on each of the following points:

1. Existing or planned projects which could form the basis for an ALA priority (with explanation of how the ALA could work with the existing project partners and what could be achieved).
2. Possible projects which could be considered for inclusion as priority projects.
3. Suggestions for individuals with the appropriate vision, collegiate approach and authority to participate in the working group to select priority projects.