People

The Library has a high-performing empowered workforce, expressing strong attachment to, and pride in, the Library. To ensure continued alignment of the workforce with organisational priorities, the Library’s Strategic Workforce Plan will focus on change and the digital environment, career sustainability and building internal capability. The plan was developed in consultation with, and is overseen by, the Library’s Corporate Management Group.

Planned activities will build the strength, capability and adaptability of the Library workforce by having the right people with the right skills at the right time.

The priorities within the plan are to:

  • broaden and enhance internal leadership capabilities based on the Library’s Leadership Capability Model, including through mentoring and reflective leadership forums;
  • cultivate collaborative business practices and embed digital confidence by creating an environment where staff develop whole-of-business capabilities, digital proficiency and business acumen; and
  • enhance and sustain a diverse and knowledge-rich workforce by creating a cohesive approach to retaining and sharing corporate and professional knowledge, representing the Australian people and developing individual capabilities.

The Library also recognises the importance of:

  • providing a workplace that is a supportive environment for our Indigenous staff;
  • building and capitalising on deep staff knowledge of the Library’s rich and diverse collection, in both digital and physical forms; and
  • building workforce capability and expertise in priority areas.

Technology

The Library continues to invest in its information and communications technology (ICT) systems, processes and people to provide new and improved capabilities, building on existing services and a history of leadership and innovation. The ICT Strategic Plan 2017–2021 covers three main areas:

  • continued improvement of technology operations through sound governance, successful execution of programs and projects, and developing the capabilities of our systems and ICT workforce;
  • alignment with business objectives— to support and enable the Library’s strategic priorities; and
  • innovation—to harness technology to do things differently and to do new things.

To achieve these aims, the Library has developed a set of principles to match the Library’s aspirations and deliver impact and value:

  • partnerships—collaborate with business areas and supplement internal organisational knowledge and capability with external partners and networks;
  • build on strengths—leverage the Library’s core strengths of developing, operating and scaling world-leading and highly efficient digital library and discovery services;
  • focus on outcomes—continue refining agile development approaches and iterative release cycles to regularly deliver incremental and tangible outcomes to users;
  • consolidation—simplify the ICT environment by minimising system duplication and by virtualising servers and storage arrays;
  • cloud-first—consider cloud-based services before developing new applications or for major application redevelopments; and
  • open data—continue our commitment to making available to the public the data we create, public domain content we digitise and content we collect digitally.

Consistent with the Library’s strategic priorities, a four-year work program will deliver across four capability domains to support digital service delivery and Library operations:

  • infrastructure—improve systems sustainability, scalability and cybersecurity;
  • digital engagement—improve user engagement and expanding channel usage, crowdsourcing and disintermediation;
  • access—improve Trove discovery and delivery services for users by developing and enhancing metadata aggregation, indexing, usability and system features; and
  • automation—improve internal efficiency and end-user services through machine learning and natural language processing.