At a time when most government departments and agencies are trimming their spending and clamping down on recruitment to meet tight budgets, one is on a growth path.
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The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which reports on the performance of hospitals, disability support services, child protection and other measures of national health and wellbeing, has spilled out of its purpose-built Canberra headquarters as it has ramped up operations to meet rapidly increasing demand for data and analysis on the provision of government services.
In the past five years the number of people working at the institute has jumped almost 50 per cent to reach 498 staff, almost a third of them contractors, and over the same period its budget has surged from less than $68 million to $148 million.
Such growth is all the more remarkable because it has coincided with a period of major austerity in government spending, marked by stringent staffing caps and tightly constrained budget outlays.
The institute's chief executive officer, Barry Sandison, admits that such expansion is "unusual" in the public sector at the moment .
But, mindful of the risk of appearing out of step with the government's agenda to bear down on public services costs and staffing, Mr Sandison is keen to emphasise that the growth is largely down to the organisation's success in attracting paying clients.
While government funding has been increasing in recent years, including a 25 per cent boost last financial year to fund an IT upgrade, more than 50 per cent of the institute's revenue comes from other sources, including government departments, state and territory governments and other Commonwealth agencies.
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The AIHW generated $44.7 million of income from such work in 2018-19, up 21 per cent from the previous year, eclipsing the $33 million allocated by the federal government in its budget.
Mr Sandison says the institute is riding a wave of growing interest among departments and agencies about using data to inform their work and make better use of resources.
"In the last 10 years or so there's been this... flourishing of interest in and capabilities around data and data management. [We are] obviously pretty well placed to be part of part of that scene. So it's interesting, our position at the moment," he says.
Awareness in the public sector of the importance of data has been ramped up.
In 2017, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull launched a $131 million, three-year project to improve data infrastructure and integration capabilities across the APS, and Mr Sandison says the result has been heightened awareness and discussion about data within government.
The AIHW has found itself increasingly in demand from departments, agencies and state and territory governments to analyse huge troves of information and draw links to provide powerful insights into how government services are being used and experienced by the public.
Aside from the Commonwealth Health Department, other clients include the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council and state and territory health and housing departments.
One of the most ambitious projects is to collect and analyse data from hospitals, Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, aged care and mortality statistics to build a comprehensive picture of how patients journey through the health and aged care systems.
"We try and look around to find areas where we can piece more of the information together to give holistic pictures," Mr Sandison says.
Commonwealth organisations like the Health Department and the Department of Veterans' Affairs and other levels of government are increasingly making use of the institute's highly-educated workforce - about 40 per cent have post-graduate qualifications - and sophisticated data-crunching capabilities to answer thorny questions.
But the organisation does not simply wait for the work to come to it.
"Experts can often sit there and assume other people know what their expertise is," Mr Sandison says. "[But you] can't just sit here and hope people understand how data can be used. You actually have to go and engage and talk about other ways to use data."
He spends a lot of his time increasing awareness of the institute's expertise and actively identifying gaps in information and understanding that it can fill.
"We look for where there are gaps," he says.
"A lot of the time a department would come to us and say we would like work on this and this and this.
"But sometimes we might go and say, 'What about some additional information on something?' and we make a decision ourselves about what we go and look at."
A recent example was work it undertook to link family violence data with emergency department statistics to deepen knowledge about the incidence and effects of domestic violence, something that had not been done before at that level.
While demand for its services is increasing, Mr Sandison downplays the prospect of further expansion.
"We will try and maintain where we are now. You don't want to grow for the sake of growth," he says.
But according to the organisation's current corporate plan this is more likely to be a pause rather than a full stop, observing that "in order to meet increasing demand...and grow our capability we will engage more contract staff through private firms and consider contracting out more of our work".
The hunt for more office space in Bruce looks set to continue.