Speaker 1: Clancie Hall
Good morning everybody.
I hope everyone can hear me.
Thank you for joining us and welcome to the information briefing for the Research Partnership grant, funded under the Working for Women Program.
I want to start by acknowledging that we're coming to you from Ngunnawal country and acknowledge the Traditional Custodians on the lands that we're meeting on and recognise any other families and people who have a connection to the lands of the ACT and the region, and I wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution that they make to the life of this city and this region.
And I'd also like to acknowledge and warmly welcome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today and acknowledge the Traditional Custodians from the lands on which you're all joining us today.
My name's Clancie Hall.
I'm from the Office for Women.
I've been in the Office for Women for over 4 years now and I've been working on programs and policies for women and gender equality for nearly a decade now.
I'm joined in the room and online by some of my team from the Office for Women who are helping and working on this research partnership grant.
I also believe I'm expecting colleagues from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) to join us as well. I'm expecting also advisers from Minister Gallagher, the Minister for Women's Office, as well, who may join in this information briefing just to be part of the information and see the interest and questions coming from people interested in this grant.
I'm also joined by Andrew Marsden from OCM, who in a moment will provide us with a probity overview before I kick off on today's presentation.
So I just really want to start by saying we are really excited about this grant in the Office for Women.
As many of you would know, there's been a lot of work done both in Australia and internationally to demonstrate the many ways that gender inequality is experienced, whether that's through the unacceptable rates of gender based violence or the gender pay gap, or how women are represented in leadership positions.
This grant provides an opportunity for a partnership between the research sector and government to continue to build on this evidence base with research that is focused on how to create and maintain progress towards gender equality.
The purpose of today's information briefing is to help you understand the intent of this grant and the key information you need to know before applying.
If you've already read the Grant Opportunity Guidelines, this briefing will highlight the key elements of the grant and hopefully help to clarify any questions you might have had.
If you haven't had a chance yet to read the grant guidelines, that's OK.
Today you should walk away with an understanding of the important aspects of this grant and what we're looking for.
Hopefully that will make it easier to read and consider the guidelines when you do do that. Over the next 20 minutes or so, I'll run you through Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality. This sets the strategic overarching context for this grant opportunity and for government’s work on gender equality.
And then I'll focus on the specifics of this research partnership grant opportunity.
So I'll cover the key elements of the Grant Opportunity Guidelines, including the program's priorities and desired outcomes, the core application requirements and the expectation for selection criteria.
There will be time for questions at the end.
We are expecting about, we had over100 registrations for this morning’s information briefing.
So we do have the microphones muted just so we don't have any tech problems.
So we're welcoming questions through the chat function on Teams.
My team is monitoring that chat function.
If somebody else asks a question that you also wanted to ask, or that you're particularly interested in the answer to, just like that question and that'll just help us kind of prioritise those when we get to that section of the presentation.
I may not be able to answer all the questions today, but every question that is asked whether it's answered or not today will be published online in our frequently asked questions document.
And the reason for that is if I'm not sure, I will take the question on notice.
Just so that I can take the time to talk with my team and give a considered response as opposed to providing information that might be misleading or not quite correct.
So as I said, the main purpose of this briefing is for us to provide information and to give a chance for questions to be asked.
But it's also a really good opportunity to consider potential consortium partnerships and I'll talk a little bit more about that in the briefing too.
Just a couple of housekeeping issues.
As I said, the microphones are muted just to avoid tech problems there.
And we are also recording this presentation, so including the questions and answers, the recording and the transcript and the slide deck with the presentation will be published on GrantConnect in a couple of days.
So I mentioned our probity advisor before. The Office for Women is undertaking this grant with a better practice, probity approach and that's to support the achievement of grant and policy outcomes and probity affectively ensures that the processes and decisions applied to grant opportunities are fair and equal.
So with that, I'll hand over to Andrew, our probity advisor, just to provide a quick probity briefing before I move into the rest of the presentation.
Speaker 2: Andrew Marsden
Thanks, Clancie.
So I'll just make sure my camera is turned on.
Thank you very much.
So yeah, as has just been stated.
So my name is Andrew Marsden and from O'Connor Marsden Associates we’re the independent probity advisors.
So you can see on the slide that we're going to assist with the good design elements and the governance aspects and do some training on grant staff around the selection process as well as look at how that process is applied so that equity, fairness and obviously best value can be achieved and you'll see the probity principles are down there.
So it's about trying to make sure you get an appropriately competitive process, which is part of this briefing session today.
We’ll be fair and consistent again, which is part of this briefing session today, transparent and accountable, and that will be walked through part of that as well today.
Confidence, confidentiality and security.
So we do treat information received confidentially and also that any process is lawful and ethical. To help from this process to going forward, what we will ask for people today for equity purposes and fairness please use the chat function to ask your questions today.
And after this session this morning, please use the communication and the clarification output communication emails.
Sorry, that's set out in the Grant Opportunity Guideline and that will help us maintain equity.
Thank you very much.
Back to you, Clancie.
Speaker 1: Clancie Hall
Thank you.
OK, so onto the Strategy.
As many of you will be aware, on the 7th of March, the Minister for Women, Senator, the Honourable Katie Gallagher, launched Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality.
The Strategy sets the framework for government action over the next 10 years to tangibly improve the lives of women and progress gender equality in Australia.
The Strategy sets the framework for government action over the next 10 years.
And it was informed by the voices of thousands of people and groups across Australia.
The Strategy includes 5 key priority areas where action is needed to progress gender equality and you can see those on the screen there. The priority areas are closely tied to one another, for example, the Strategy recognises that women’s safety cannot be separated from their caring responsibilities, their economic equality, health or involvement in decision making.
The Strategy also recognises that gender norms and attitudes are a key aspect underpinning all the priority areas.
The need for change to norms and attitudes is outlined as a foundation of the Strategy.
As I said before, we are really excited about this grant and the opportunity to work in partnership with a research organisation to build the evidence base on what works to achieve gender equality.
This grant offers up to $5 million to conduct and translate research to drive action to achieve gender equality, with a particular focus on economic equality.
Over the years, there's been significant effort to build a strong evidence base on the impact of gender inequality, how it affects women and how it holds our country back. This grant is designed as a key part of delivering on Working for Women, that Strategy that I spoke about a minute ago. The partnership between government and researchers will work to identify and provide evidence on the actions needed to create and maintain real progress.
The focus of this research partnership is on economic equality, and this is because it's an area where there's limited, nationally coordinated and actionable evidence on where to focus and scale effort.
We expect this partnership will work to complement other existing coordinated research efforts that we see around gender based violence and also in in the women's health space.
The investment is geared towards strengthening the evidence base where gaps remain and translating evidence into action for government, but also for industry and the community more broadly.
The Office for Women will facilitate access to relevant government partners in order to inform and build the research coming out of this partnership.
One example of that is given the focus on economic equality, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, WGEA, will be a key stakeholder on the government side of the partnership and we expect will be closely involved in the work of this research partnership.
There may be other data custodians across the Commonwealth who hold data that might be useful to particular research projects, and we'll work with the grantee to liaise and facilitate access to that data where possible.
So there are three key activities that the research partner will be engaged to develop and deliver.
The first is an agile and iterative research agenda.
The second is pulse checks to hear directly from the Australian community, and the third is actionable insights to identify areas for action.
So the research agenda will be important to ensure activities respond to government priorities, complement broader research efforts and focus effort where existing evidence is limited. The pulse checks will provide a snapshot of the current views and concerns of the public as they relate to gender inequality, with a particular emphasis on capturing the diverse lived experiences of women and understanding the issues that matter most to them.
These insights will influence the research to better inform and support the development of public policy.
The Actionable Insight reports will outline the actions that can be taken by government and non-government stakeholders to achieve gender equality.
They will translate the research so it can be accessed and actioned easily.
Whether this is by government, industry, the community or other stakeholders. Under this grant, we're expecting a minimum of five insight reports to be delivered across the life of the partnership.
We expect intersectionality to be a core research focus and feature throughout the reports.
As I've already mentioned up to $5 million is available for this grant.
This funding is phased over six financial years from the 2024-25 financial year, this current financial year, to 2029-30.
The grant period will be a little bit over five years beginning in March 2025 and concluding on the 30th of June 2030.
Indexation will be applied to this grant in line with the relevant wage cost index.
It's expected that we will fund one grant through this opportunity with funding dependent on the scope of the grant activity and its complexity.
But as I said before, up to $5 million is available.
Applicants must meet the eligibility requirements outlined in the Grant Opportunity Guidelines to have their application considered.
Those are sections 4.1 and 4.2 of the Grant Opportunity Guidelines.
Please pay really close attention to the eligibility as we hate to see people spend time on applications that they are ineligible to receive the funding for.
So I mentioned at the start of the presentation about consortia.
So consortia arrangements are where two or more organisations come together to deliver as part of a partnership group.
Under these arrangements, there'll be a lead organisation that will submit the application and they form the legal relationship with the department.
They will have responsibility for signing and meeting the obligations of the grant agreement.
The lead organisation must meet all the eligibility criteria, however, they can form a consortia with ineligible organisations to enable them to leverage the expertise that might be unique to the private sector.
You may wish to connect with participants here today in order to explore options for forming a consortia.
So if you're interested in that, you are welcome to put your contact details in the chat to connect with other organisations. For privacy reasons, we cannot pass on other people's details of those that are registered today, but as I said, you're welcome to use the chat function to provide your contact details if you're interested in connecting with others.
Under this grant opportunity, consortia applications are really encouraged and they provide a unique opportunity for cross collaboration and sharing of expertise.
Consortia can maximise economies of scale, improve geographic coverage and they can take advantage of diverse expertise.
They may also help to address potential capacity limitations of smaller organisations to meet the grant opportunity objectives and to comply with Commonwealth grant requirements such as governance and financial capability. Consortia is also a way for multiple organisations to use their resources together and deliver more cohesive and effective activities.
If you're applying as a consortia, a Consortia Letter of Declaration must be signed by all members of the proposed consortia on the template that's provided, and it must be attached to the application when it's submitted by the lead organisation.
You must have a formal arrangement in place with all consortia partners prior to the execution of a grant agreement if you are successful in receiving funding through this grant opportunity. As you'll be working closely together with consortia partners over the life of the agreement, we really encourage you, all members of a consortia arrangement, to understand the obligations and requirements of that arrangement and you may like to consider seeking independent legal advice prior to the execution of the grant agreement just so that you are fully aware of all of your accountabilities.
Moving on to application arrangements.
So under this grant opportunity, you can only submit one application. If more than one application is submitted, only the last application will be accepted and will progress to assessment. Applicants who apply as the lead of a consortia are not able to apply as an applicant in their own right, so they cannot have two applications - one as a lead of a consortia and one as their organisation individually. They can however, join other consortia applications as a member.
Applicants who are a member of a consortia application but not the lead can apply as an applicant in their own right.
This practice of only allowing one application per organisation is to enable us to mitigate risks around receiving multiple applications from one organisation, which can create complexity with the assessment process and it also creates inequities or unfairness in the application process, as obviously bigger organisations with more people might be able to submit more applications than smaller organisations.
And we want to level the playing field.
I know we have a number of universities on the line today and interested in this grant opportunity. For those who are applying from a university, we just want to emphasise that generally universities are considered as one organisation.
ABNs are used to identify individual organisations applying for funding.
So that's the unique identifier that we look at to understand whether there are multiple applications or not.
So this means if faculties within a university have separate ABNs and operate as separate entities, you may be eligible to submit multiple applications.
However, if you're university has one ABN and you operate as one entity, you may only be eligible to submit one application.
If a university submits multiple applications using the same ABN, only the application submitted most recently, so the closest to the closing date, will be considered.
We've seen examples in the past where multiple applications have been received from a single university where people have been applying and not been aware that other people are also applying.
So we really encourage those within a university setting or other organisations that are similar to ensure you're engaging broadly across your organisation to avoid having multiple applications submitted and only one going through.
Moving on to the assessment criteria, so these are outlined in section 6 of the Grant Opportunity Guidelines.
The criteria is what we use to assess your application. In responses to selection criteria, we want applicants to demonstrate their capacity and capability to deliver the grant and support action under Working for Women.
We don't need you to quote statistics or quote content back to us from Working for Women.
There is a character limit on the selection criteria responses.
So you need to think really carefully about the information that is going to help us best understand the value that you bring to this partnership.
So selection criteria number 1. In this criteria, we're looking to understand what activities and deliverables you propose, how they'll be delivered and how they will contribute to advancing women's economic equality.
This is your opportunity to propose the activities that you will deliver under this grant and how it will support Working for Women.
Criterion one has a 50% weighting and will make up half of the final score of your application when we're assessing it.
This criterion is weighted to acknowledge how important this information is in assessing the most suitable proposal.
Criteria two has a 30% weighting of the final score of the application.
It asks you to demonstrate how your organisation or consortia will operate as partners with government and engage with relevant stakeholders.
This criteria is about understanding how you will work with others to ensure the activities and deliverables are fit for purpose.
And we're interested in understanding how you will partner with government as well as work with other researchers and relevant stakeholders like the women's sector and industry who might use the research.
Ultimately, we want this research to build upon the body of work that already exists, and in turn, we want this research to be accessible for others to continue to build upon in the future.
And your application should demonstrate how you will achieve this.
Criteria 3 has a 20% weighting of the final score.
This criteria is about understanding the expertise and experience of your organisation and team, including relevant gender expertise and experience producing research.
We are looking to understand your project management and governance approach to delivering the grant as well.
This criteria really helps us to understand the ability of your organisation or consortia to manage a $5 million grant with the government.
So what does a good application look like?
A strong application is one that meets all the eligibility criteria in full, clearly and fully responds to all the required selection criteria in the correct section of the form, provides convincing evidence and data to show how your proposed activities will be successful, clearly identifies how proposed activities leverage what is already being delivered, and complements or expands to achieve the program objectives, has considered how engagement will ensure diversity and inclusion of all women, an intersectional approach is really critical for this work.
A strong application also demonstrates a strong governance framework including financial capability and risk policies commensurate with the level of funding being applied for. For consortia applications a strong application also has clearly explained the partnership model, the contributions of all the members and the governance structure that will be used through that partnership.
So this grant opportunity opened on the 13th of August and it will remain open for six weeks, closing on the 23rd of September, we anticipate the grant agreement with the successful recipient will be in place in March 2025.
And we expect the first payment will occur in this financial year shortly after the agreement is signed.
The screen on the table.
Oh, the table on the screen provides a little bit more detail there.
So that brings us to the end of the presentation and I expect, checking in with my team, that we've probably had some questions come in. Now while I can't provide individual guidance on developing your application or on specific eligibility requirements, I'm really happy to have a look at the questions and see what we can answer while we're all here today and which ones that we will take away on notice.
So I'm just having a look at some of the questions we've received.
Can a government agency who is ineligible to lead, be part of a consortia with an eligible lead organisation?
That's a good question.
So section 4.1 and 4.2 of the Grant Opportunity Guidelines outline the eligibility criteria.
So ineligible organisations are able to form a consortia with eligible organisations, but they may not be the lead.
So our view is that an ineligible government agency could be a consortia member.
OK, right.
So I hope that answers that question.
I will say just a clarifying point on ineligible organisations, in the Grant Opportunity Guidelines you will see that all organisations need to comply with, requirements around WGEA reporting and also child safety requirements.
So all members of the consortia need to comply with those requirements, that eligibility requirement on the WGEA compliance and the child safety requirements.
They're not waived for a consortia member, but in the context of this question that's being asked about an eligible entity type, they would be allowed to be a consortia member.
Next question.
Can I clarify what appendices, if any, can be attached to the application, So additional information outside of the mandatory attachments will not be considered in the assessment process.
So you can only attach the required mandatory attachments to the application.
We won't consider other material that is attached.
Is there a limit to how many applications an organisation can partner in?
To clarify, can a university be a member of different consortia’s, can they be a lead of one consortia and a member of others?
So there is no limit to the number of applications that you could be a partner in.
So if you want to be a member of a consortia in five different applications, that's for you to manage and for you to kind of consider any potential commercial conflicts that that might arise for you.
You can be - a university can be - a lead in a consortia and a member in other consortia as well.
But you can only be the lead in one, so I hope that clarifies that question.
This is another consortia question.
So when you say a formal agreement with all consortia partners needs to be in place prior to signing the grant agreement, can I elaborate on that? Am I expecting the lead organisation to have a formal research collaboration agreement with all partners prior to signing the head grant agreement? Is the formal agreement between the consortia partners required at the application stage in addition to the commitment letter?
So, just getting my answer to that. So at the application stage all you need to have and submit is the letter of declaration that's signed by all consortia members and that effectively lets us know that everybody that you have said is part of your consortia knows that they are part of your consortia and has signed up to that, that application, that model, that proposal that you're putting forward. If you're successful, the lead organisation will need to have a formal agreement or arrangement in place with all partners prior to signing the grant agreement with the department. So that formal arrangement doesn't need to happen unless you are found suitable for the funding and it just needs to happen before you sign the head agreement with the Commonwealth, with the Office for Women.
Moving on.
So another question: would only one consortia or organisation be chosen or could multiple consortia be found successful in this grant?
So we are expecting to issue only one grant agreement under this grant opportunity.
So we are expecting that one application will be found suitable for funding.
Oh this is a great question.
How does this partnership interact and intersect with the National Women's Alliances?
So really great question.
So the National Women's Alliances, for those that are not aware, the Office for Women funds a range of women’s sector organisations to provide advice to government to inform policy development and bring forward the lived experience of a diverse range of women to inform policy development.
We currently have a grant opportunity underway to fund the National Women's Alliances from December this year and they cover six themes and those themes align with Working for Women, so they are gender based violence, economic equality and security, First Nations women, migrant and refugee, culturally and linguistically diverse women, women with disability, and women living in rural, regional and remote areas.
It is our expectation that the National Women's Alliances will work with the research partnership.
We expect there to be some collaboration.
Obviously, the National Women's Alliances have a connection with women in the community.
They have an expertise on particular groups of women or particular policy issues, and we think that that will be really valuable to informing the work of the research partnership and that's another example of how the Office for Women can facilitate access to expertise for this research partnership.
And we will formalise the arrangements for that or set some, set some clear expectations around that once both these grant opportunities are finalised and we know what the composition of these grantees are.
There's one more.
OK. Yep.
Ohh I've seen, I can see one.
Ohh so I see 1 here in the chat.
I'll go a bit rogue instead of waiting for the team to drop it in for me.
So over the life of the research, can a consortia bring in new partners or new members to address emerging issues?
Absolutely.
The grant agreement will require that you seek the approval of the Office for Women in making any changes to your consortia arrangements, whether that be an organisation no longer being part of that or bringing a new one on.
But part of this grant will be, part of funding this grant over five years is so that we can, evolve and be responsive to emerging issues.
So we would be very open to that proposition.
So that's a really great, great question.
Thank you.
I see another question here about can I describe more about what the co-design and governance of grant activities with Office for Women will look like for the successful organisation or consortia? Yes, a little bit, I can.
So we haven't been prescriptive yet about what the governance arrangements might look like for this research partnership, because we want to wait to see what the successful proposal looks like and we're conscious that those governance arrangements could look different depending on who is found suitable to deliver this grant.
So we'll consider that closer to the time, but part of the reason of scoping this grant opportunity as a partnership is because we really do want there to be collaboration between government and the researchers.
We don't just want to kind of throw $5 million out there and sort of say, you know, go and research whatever you want and do whatever you want with it. We want to be able to say as government these are areas where we would value some research where we see a gap, but similarly we know that from within inside government we’re only one actor under Working for Women that can create change.
We know that there are actions for industry and the community, and so the research needs are beyond just us and the research sector, you know, it holds an expertise and an understanding and the networks to also be able to come to the table and say, well, this is what we're hearing are the gaps and this is where we know that there, could be value unpacking a particular issue.
So we are looking for a collaborative partnership.
We're looking for some shared decision-making in the topics that are researched, in the methodology for the research, but acknowledging that, you know, there are different levels of expertise.
You know, when we start to get to the real technical parts of research and data collection and things like that, that would be a place where the research partner would really, you know, where we would be really valuing their expertise and what they were bringing to the table.
One of the first things that we'll do as far as co-design and collaboration under this grant agreement will be to work with the successful organisation or consortia to develop the activity work plan and that's effectively the project plan for the grant.
So we'll work together to design a template that works and you know, communicate about deliverables and timeframes and things like that.
Can I provide some more detail about what we are thinking about for the pulse checks?
So the pulse checks are a way to connect and hear from people in the community, primarily women, but people in the community to understand what their experiences of gender inequality are, what their priorities are, how things are shifting, or not, for them.
It's really about making sure that this research partnership is not just delivering research that is kind of conceived in a bubble or in a silo, without connection to what's happening on the ground, and those pulse checks are one of the ways that under Working for Women, we want to stay connected and informed about women and their lives and how gender equality is kind of progressing in the community.
The National Women's Alliances is another one of those key mechanisms for hearing diverse lived experience.
I see a question here about intellectual property.
That's a pretty complex question, so I'm not going to tackle that one here.
I might ask Paula McDonald who's asked that question, if you can maybe articulate a little bit more about what your question is about intellectual property and we can take that away and come back to you with an answer on that one.
Have I missed any that are above?
OK, good.
Just wanted to make sure I didn't miss any early birds.
Another question about can I define community?
Does it include large, small business, social enterprise, schools? Not for profit?
And so I think when I used the word community before, it was probably in my list of government, industry, community, and it's really kind of just trying to pick up on more broadly those people that exist or organisations that exist in society that can take action to progress gender equality but that aren't necessarily government or industry.
So it will largely depend on the context of the research and what question we're trying to answer.
But yes, it could include schools, not for profits, sporting organisations, and it could be geographical. It could be a kind of like cohort based kind of community.
I sort of use that word a little bit loosely and the way that it would play out for this research partnership would really just depend on the research topic and what we were trying to understand.
Ohh, question from Leonora.
Thank you.
Can I elaborate on how the research partnership outputs will intersect with the government's gender responsive budgeting plans.
Great question. So, for those that aren't aware, this government reintroduced gender responsive budgeting.
It's effectively a way that we provide advice and information to decision makers on the gender impacts of policy proposals in order to inform their decision making one of the
[Very loud plane flying overhead.]
One of the kind of key pieces of gender responsive budgeting and gender analysis is access to data and research to inform insights.
So in this research partnership, we would expect that the outputs whether they be the pulse checks or the actionable insights would help inform gender responsive budgeting and will just add to the evidence base that policymakers can draw on in order to inform their gender analysis.
Paula, thanks for the clarification on intellectual property.
We'll come back to you in the FAQs with an answer on that one because it is a complex one and I want to make sure I get all my words right before I answer that question.
Any other questions?
I'm just scanning back through to make sure that I've answered everything. I think I've got everything so far.
I'm hoping that that was a useful presentation, and I'm hoping that those questions help to clarify things for people.
So as a reminder, as Andrew said at the start, if you have any further questions during the application period, please contact the Community Grants Hub and the details are in the Grant Opportunity Guidelines. Please don't contact the Office for Women directly.
All the queries and concerns around this funding, around this grant just need to go through those official processes.
They will make their way to us so that we can answer them, and that just ensures that all the FAQs are answered appropriately and everybody's updated at the same time.
So in closing, I just want to thank everybody for attending and for your interest in this grant opportunity.
Just a reminder that this recording, my slides and a transcript will be provided on GrantConnect shortly and we really look forward to seeing your applications.
So thank you very much.