Australia Yearbook - 2001

Year Book Australia 2001
xxxiii
industry would fit together without overlap,
duplication or omission in coverage, and produce
a range of economic data according to a common
system of concepts. To do this it was necessary to
standardise all the data collected and to prepare a
register of businesses operating in Australia. 11
This process impacted strongly in all offices and
gave another thrust to the move to a more
centrally planned and managed approach. It is
worth noting that the impact of the integrated
economic collections, and the growth in the
demand for statistics, was significant on both the
Federal and State organisations. Again using the
example of Victoria, at the time of integration in
1958 there were about 100 people employed in
the Victorian Office, but by 1977 there were
nearly 500 (today there are 350).
To meet this new demand, staffing not only had
to be increased but the right type of staff had to
be employed. After integration, this was an
important issue as most staff in the State Offices
were male and normally ex-service, whose
strength was in keeping an operation running but
not usually in initiating change. The most
significant step taken to address these matters
was the recruitment of many graduate staff, and
of particular importance here was the statistics
cadetship scheme. In this scheme, which still
operates today, the Bureau employed young
people before they finished their degrees. 12 The
scheme was remarkably successful, having a
strong and continuing impact in both Central and
State Offices. Many graduates of the scheme went
on to senior level positions in the Bureau
including as Australian Statistician, in other
government departments including as Permanent
Secretaries, and in the private sector.
In another sense, the slow change at the start of
the integrated statistical service was not
surprising, given the size of Australia and the
difficulties that then existed with communication.
However, technology became a driving force for
change. The large volume of statistical
information being collected could no longer be
handled efficiently by manual methods, and after
the Second World War various types of
mechanical processing were implemented. In the
early 1960s the Commonwealth Statistician
established a computer network in all State
Offices, which from the beginning was closely
managed from the centre. The growing use of
technology thus became a strong impetus for a
more coordinated and centrally managed
statistical system. (As an example of the
interlinking of these forces for change, it is
interesting to note that the development of
this network required many skilled
computing experts who were not readily
available in Australia. The solution was
twofold. First, to undertake extensive
training of staff in the skills required, and
these courses predated any undergraduate
computing courses offered by Australian
universities. Second, to recruit many such
people from the United Kingdom. They
served the Bureau very well, and eventually
had a significant impact on computing
elsewhere in Australia.)
Another important change was the
introduction in the mid 1960s of a capacity to
conduct interview surveys at households
across Australia. It was initiated by the
Commonwealth Government specifically to
run a labour force survey. This time-critical
collection, which employed a large number
of part-time interviewers across Australia, was
centrally planned and centrally managed.
This was another forerunner of the changes
that would be made in the management of
the integrated service, with Central Office
senior management having more direct
involvement in the activities of the State
Offices. It also provided the basis on which
the ABS was able, in the years to come, to
build its large program of labour and social
surveys, collectively called the Population
Surveys.
A further important factor which influenced
the way the integrated service operated was
the upsurge in the use of sampling and other
methodological techniques, which were used
to help meet the demand for more and
different statistics within reasonable costs.
People with these skills were, and still are,
scarce resources, and it was natural,
therefore, for them to be generally located in
the centre. As their work encompassed the
whole of the integrated service, there is no
doubt that they were, and still are, a strong
unifying force. Although the cadetship
scheme was, and still is, a great source for
people with these skills, there was a need to
recruit and to mount special recruitment
campaigns.
By the early 1970s, although the Bureau’s
statistical output had expanded considerably
and had a more contemporary flavour, the
management of the statistical service was still
firmly based on the conduct of annual