News & Views item - February 2006

 

 

CSIRO Somewhat Below Average as a Customer Server. (February 17, 2006)

    CSIRO's quarterly evaluation of the satisfaction of its clients, the Customer Value Survey was published on January 6 but made publicly available on February 15.

 

The organisation states"[It] is a quarterly online survey that asks a selection of CSIRO’s customers to provide us with feedback on the value of research and services provided by CSIRO, and to compare our services with those of other R&D providers."

 

The concluding summary in the 12 page document is straight forward:

Remarks

 

Over the last five surveys, CSIRO has experienced a downward trend in overall value, price and quality. While Overall Price appears to have steadied between Q2 2005 and Q3 2005, Overall Value and Overall Quality continue to decline.

 

Overall Price has plateaued much lower than the industry average while Overall Value has fallen below this average since the last quarter.

 

Clearly strategies are required to address this overall downward trend, particularly as CSIRO now ranks below industry average in two out of the three value

The Australian yesterday quoted CSIRO chief executive Geoff Garrett admitting "the organisation had 'taken our eye off the ball' during an internal restructure."

 

While just exactly how that might be interpreted is better understood by assessing the table below which is reproduced from the survey's Table 4 with minor modifications to assist understanding.

 

The organisation was rated at above 8  (above average) in only one category, "using rigorous scientific approach", and that for the first three quarters of 2004.

 

It was rated below average (<6.5) 17 times and average 90 times.

 

Overall it judged itself to be "for overall value" average (7.0) for the first three quarters of 2004, just average (6.5) for the 2nd quarter of 2005, and just below average for the 3rd quarter of 2005).

 

No scores are given for the 4th quarter of 2004 or the 1st quarter of 2005 and a weighting of scores was introduced (without explanation) for the last set of figures (3rd quarter 2005).

 

Dr Garrett is now into his 6th year as CSIRO's Chief Executive Officer with a mandate from the Coalition government to remake it in the image of South Africa's CSIR if not in whole at least in major part.

What Dr Garrett and his chosen administrative team have been telling anyone who is prepared to listen is that it's gonna happen real soon now.

 

It won't, and in the meantime morale keeps sinking, its science for the public good is diminishing, and it courts opprobrium through the gagging of its researchers and the hyperbolic publication of the Total Wellbeing Diet.

 

To their everlasting credit there are some scientists that remain who are doing excellent research and development, in spite of -- certainly not because of -- the milieu into which they have been cast.

 

 


 

[Note added 18 February]

    The following is a letter to the editor of The Age published today:

CSIRO is in crisis

...I worked with industry, on pure and applied research, on contracted projects with tight deadlines, fixed budgets and specific deliverables, and recently on a highly commercial project. The work was challenging and rewarding, and quite suitable for CSIRO's talented scientists.

However, they are no longer trusted in CSIRO. Now there are communicators for getting the right message out, business development managers to interface with clients and line managers to ensure that one does not step over the line.

I was sidelined - effectively gagged - from my project's commercial aspects because the science did not concur with the commercial outcome needed.

Removing researchers from the commercial chain is an error and suggests that CSIRO does not trust its most valuable resource: its scientists. CSIRO is in crisis.

Dr Fred Prata, former CSIRO senior principal research scientist, Mount Eliza