Australia needs to start a conversation about data governance in professional sport, including creating appropriate legal, organisational, and ethical limits around athlete data collection and use.

This discussion paper was developed by the Australian Academy of Science and the Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab at UWA Law School, with support from the Frontier Technology Initiative of Minderoo Foundation.

It reveals that Australian professional sports are collecting more personal information about athletes than they can meaningfully deal with. Concerningly, this data – which is personal, unique, and intimately revealing about individual athletes – amounts to excessively more information than has been proven to be useful. What are the stakes of exponential and unregulated growth in human monitoring for the workplace of professional sport, and beyond? What are the challenges, the opportunities, and the imperatives to act?

The co-chairs of the Expert Working Group that produced the discussion paper, Professor Toby Walsh and Associate Professor Julia Powles, outline the main issues and call for improved governance of data collection in professional sport.

Watch the launch event

Explore more

Dr Jason Weber

Professional Strength and Conditioning Coach, Sports Scientist

Dr Rachel Harris

Olympian; Sport and Exercise Medicine Physiologist

Executive summary

This discussion paper aims to ignite a conversation about the current reality that Australian professional sports are collecting extraordinary amounts of personal information about athletes. Concerningly, this data – which is continuous, personal, sensitive, and can be intimately revealing – amounts to excessively more information than has been shown to be beneficial to athletes, or to be capable of responsible, athlete-centric management. Increasingly, the marketing and commercial divisions of sporting leagues/associations and an array of third parties are eyeing this information as a monetisable asset, divorced from the individuals involved. This explosion in the amount of data being generated and in the number of parties who have taken an interest in it has dramatically shifted the risk–reward ratio against athletes. Paying attention to this growing mass of information about the mental and physical health and performance of athletes matters greatly. It has implications within sport and for anyone concerned about the direction of human monitoring in workplaces and public places well beyond the sporting landscape.

The rush to data presents two major problems which warrant serious consideration and a systemic response from the professional sport sector. The first concern is that professional sport increasingly faces a stark resourcing choice between a data-informed sports science and sports medicine (SSSM) approach with disciplinary knowledge, evidence, and translation at the centre, or a data-driven path where context and expertise are replaced by the centrality of often unproven and unvalidated data and technology. Such a transition risks replacing specialists who are highly trained in particular sports science disciplines – exercise physiology, biomechanics, strength and conditioning, motor control/learning and skill acquisition – with generalists who may be adept in data collection and analytics, but who lack deep domain expertise about the complexities and vagaries of human function, particularly in extreme environments and within small, highly-specific populations. Given the commercial realities of professional sport as a business with soft salary caps, trade-offs, and tight margins (even without the compounding strains of the global COVID-19 pandemic), this is a calculus to approach with great caution.

If the first concern is scientific, the second is human. This discussion paper focuses on data about athletes – people of extraordinary skill and dedication, living short, furious, intense careers at the frontier of human performance. But athletes also have lives before, during, and after sport. And the path of unrestricted data collection is also a path that treats the workplace of professional sport as a 24/7 zone of human monitoring and marketisation. Australian privacy law requires that personal information should only be collected where it is “reasonably necessary” for an organisation’s functions or activities. Following guidance from the leading federal privacy regulator, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, personal information that is “merely helpful, desirable or convenient”, “being entered in a database in case it might be needed in the future”, or collected as part of “normal business practice”, simply does not satisfy this requirement. This presents a real and present risk to the professional sport sector, where an extensive – and growing – amount of personal information is collected simply as a matter of routine. The governance of personal information has tremendous implications for professional athletes, but just as significantly, the degree of surveillance and monitoring tolerated in this space foreshadows what will be permitted in community sports, other workplaces, and everyday life.

The sheer complexity and scale of current athlete data collection and processing are increasingly challenging for any individual to comprehend. This complexity is compounded by the power relations that exist between athletes, clubs, and professional leagues/associations, as well as with third-party commercial entities who may sell up, be acquired, or go bankrupt, leaving the products and information they hold subject to a variety of shifting fates. This is precisely the sort of landscape where legal and ethical guardrails and a significant uplift in literacy and governance are necessary to ensure that athletes and athlete rights are protected and promoted, both in their own interest and in the public interest.

The first decadal plan for Australian space science presents a consolidated vision for space science and technology in Australia, a case for why Australia should invest in a world-class space capability, and a research and education program to develop this capability.

This document outlines the importance and current status of space science in Australia, and the specific scientific goals of the Australian space science community for the period 2010–2019.

Space science is a key component of Australia’s scientific landscape. Space phenomena are key drivers of numerous Earth system processes. They also provide unique opportunities for unexpected and exciting discoveries in the enabling and applied sciences and engineering.

This report presents key strategic data-related needs and challenges for science research captured by the Australian Academy of Science through consultations with researchers and other experts across a range of science disciplines.

The report finds key data challenges and opportunities including:

• greater coordination and national integration across Australia’s research data infrastructure
• consistent and enforceable data policies and standards
• promotion of data sharing
• addressing challenges associated with using and managing large volumes of data
• development of a digitally-skilled research workforce.

The report provides recommendations for action and leadership to address these urgent research data issues to support data-enabled scientific research in Australia.

This project is the result of a partnership between the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), Australia's five Learned Academies, and the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) to ensure Australia can undertake excellent data-enabled research across all fields of research.

Notably, the project sought to help build a more coherent data policy and strategic data planning environment to uplift national data infrastructure.

Five domain reports were developed, and a synthesis report focused on common themes and cross- and inter-disciplinary opportunities and needs.

Read the synthesis report at the ACOLA website

Read the ARDC and ACOLA media release

Read the other learned academies reports:

• Australian Academy of Humanities
• Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences
• Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering
• Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia

This project received investment from the ARDC. The ARDC is supported by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Australia requires a robust national climate science capability to understand and make forecasts and projections of weather, climate variability and climate change.

This capability is comprised of infrastructure, and scientific and technical personnel in observations, fundamental climate science, climate systems modelling and application in the provision of climate services.

This report makes a number of recommendations to guide investment in Australian climate science, to preserve our ability to observe, model, and understand Australian climate systems and to safeguard Australia’s future.

Our world is experiencing transformative change. Geopolitical forces are realigning. The centre of economic gravity is moving east. Our climate is changing, and we are heading for a population of 9–10 billion by mid-century that is economically globalised and undergoing profound urbanisation and demographic transitions.

The Australian Academy of Science’s ambitious Australia 2050 project is intended to help Australia chart its path into this uncertain but shared future by engaging scientists, business people, policy makers and members of the public in structured conversations about the challenges we face, and the kind of Australia we want for our children.

Downloads

Watch: Australia 2050

About the project

Australia 2050 was initiated in 2010 by the Australian Academy of Science with funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The project was run in two phases.

1. Phase one brought together scientists and experts in economics, the humanities and business to take part in a four-day workshop that set out to answer the question: What is a realistic vision for an ecologically, economically and socially sustainable Australia to 2050 and beyond? It considered how such a vision could be developed and evolved to support coherent societal responses to the great challenges of environmental and economic sustainability and social equity. Participants discussed this issue from contrasting perspectives and agreed on the idea of ‘living scenarios’ – shared, ongoing explorations of how the future might unfold.
2. The second phase of the project put the 'living scenarios' concept into action at a two-day workshop held in Canberra in 2013 where 50 Australians from a wide variety of backgrounds were invited to share their ideas through a set of guided conversations about what Australia might become.

More information about all phases of this ambitious five-year project are available by downloading the resources above. The resources are intended to be used by groups around the country who want to discuss what they and others can do to influence Australia’s future. The Academy hopes that these resources will help contribute to many future conversations and debates about our future.

This report presents findings from consultations with the research community on the challenges and opportunities of data-intensive research in Australia.

The report identifies opportunities to advance data-intensive research in Australia by aligning research policy, research infrastructure, skills and education, and recognising data science as a distinct scientific discipline.

The report was funded by the Australian Research Council under the Learned Academies Special Projects scheme.

Climate change is putting cultural and natural assets of the world at risk, and Australia is no exception with many of our World Heritage properties at high risk from climate change. 

The challenges that climate change poses to World Heritage properties is complex, requiring multidisciplinary expertise including technical and legal experts in natural and cultural heritage, climate change, and diplomacy. 

The ideas generated by this roundtable aim to help the World Heritage community address the threat of climate change by addressing collective challenges, rather than on a property-by-property basis.

The ‘World Heritage Convention and climate change roundtable’ was held on 6 December 2021, hosted by the Academy in consultation with the Australian Academy of Law.

A roundtable was hosted by the Australian Academy of Science in consultation with the Australian Academy of Law on Monday 6 December 2021 to generate ideas to address the operational and legal consequences of climate change on World Heritage assets.

The roundtable addressed three key topics that the 2021 draft Climate Policy identified as needing resolution:

• Should a property be inscribed on the World Heritage List while knowing that its potential Outstanding Universal Value may disappear due to climate change impacts?
• Should a property be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger or deleted from the World Heritage List due to impacts beyond the sole control of the concerned State Party (i.e. threats and the detrimental impacts on the integrity of World Heritage properties associated with the global impacts of warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions)?
• Will it be impossible for some natural and cultural properties to maintain the ‘original’ Outstanding Universal Value for which they were inscribed on the World Heritage List, even if effective adaptation and mitigation strategies are applied?

A roundtable on negative emissions approaches (removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere) was organised on Friday 16 September 2022 by the Australian Academy of Science.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much and as fast as possible is the highest priority. In parallel, we need rapid and large-scale removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere, combined with long-term storage, to limit warming.

The aim of the roundtable was to discuss the science that would enable breakthroughs to meet the scale of the removal challenge, the research needed, the cooperation and investment required to deliver the means to the essential end – a liveable and more sustainable planet.

Participants identified a range of novel approaches across capture, storage, utilisation and monitoring and highlighted that a wide range of options should be explored as part of a portfolio of solutions. Their impact should be measurable, scalable, affordable and permanent. They should provide social, economic and environmental co-benefits, and limit externalities and future risk.

The roundtable statement provides an overview of the discussion.

A national roundtable to identify Australia's RNA science and technology priorities was held on Thursday, 29 July 2021, hosted by the Australian Academy of Science and the Australia and New Zealand RNA Production Consortium.

The group, comprised of experts in RNA biology and biotechnology from academia and industry, discussed how Australia can play a leading role in the global ecosystem of RNA science and harness the opportunities for Australian industry to develop RNA-based products and services for global markets. 

The group concluded that a national mission is required to ensure Australia can fulfil this leading global role.