Resource Agreement 2017–18

The Parliamentary Service Act 1999 requires that the Librarian and the Secretary DPS make an annual agreement specifying the resources that will be provided to the Library.²⁴ The agreement must be made between the Secretary and the Parliamentary Librarian, and approved by the Presiding Officers in writing after receiving advice about the contents of the agreement from the JSCPL.

The Resource Agreement helps assure the Parliamentary Librarian’s continued independence and enables parliamentary scrutiny of the Library’s resourcing. The 2017–18 agreement was:

• signed by the Parliamentary Librarian and Secretary DPS on 1 June 2017
• considered by the JSCPL on 19 June 2017, and
• approved by the Presiding Officers on 22 June 2017.

Financial performance

The Resource Agreement 2017–18 provided:

• an operating budget of $15,491,243
• a capital budget (used for the Library collection and minor capital projects) of $3,593,168, and
• an average FTE, including capitalised salaries, of 137.5

Actual expenditure was $15.367 million in operational funding and $3.304 million in capital.

Employee costs accounted for the majority of the Library’s budget, with the remaining funds largely spent on the collection. Collection expenditure in 2017–18 comprised:

• information resources (including database subscriptions and news services)—$2.139 million (operational)
• reference serials and monographs—$0.649 million (capital)
• digitisation—$1.436 million (capital)
• digital repository—$0.059 (capital), and
• news clips–$0.116 (capital).

The major pressures on the Library’s budget in 2017–18 were cost increases for collection resources of around five per cent over the previous financial year, exacerbated by fluctuations in the value of the Australian dollar. Both affected the Library’s purchasing power.

The end of year result was closely aligned with the available budget. There were, however, some minor internal variations to anticipated expenditure on employee and collection costs (both operational funding). Employee costs were under-spent by some 2.5 per cent ($0.329 million). A number of factors contributed to this, including recruitment timelines and the absence of a senior manager due to a work-related injury. The underspend of $0.288 million in the Library’s capital budget was primarily the result of the vendor delay in completing the final phase of the scanning of the information files. In 2017–18, news clips from the 1950s began to be digitised. These are in a more fragile state than those from later decades, and, as a consequence, the pace of digitisation slowed considerably. The final payment for this work has been rolled over to 2018–19.

A more detailed breakdown of budget and actual expenditure can be found in the financial tables at pages 142–143.

Figure 6: Parliamentary Library budget 2005–06 to 2018–19

Figure 7: Parliamentary Library budget (resource agreement) and expenditure 2015–16 to 2017–18

The year ahead

The Presiding Officers approved the Parliamentary Library Resource Agreement 2018–19 on 1 August 2018. It provides that the Parliamentary Librarian receive:

• operating funding of $15,613,010, and
• capital funding of $3,033,105.