Resource Agreement 2018–19

The Parliamentary Service Act 1999 equires that the Librarian and the Secretary DPS make an annual agreement specifying the resources that will be provided to the Library.¹⁶ The Agreement must be made between the Secretary and the Parliamentary Librarian, and approved by the Presiding Officers in writing after receiving advice about its contents from the JSCPL.

The Resource Agreement helps assure the Parliamentary Librarian’s continued independence and enables parliamentary scrutiny of the Library’s resourcing.

The 2018–19 agreement was:

• signed by the Parliamentary Librarian and Secretary DPS on 1 June 2018
• considered by the JSCPL on 18 June 2018 and
• approved by the Presiding Officers on 2 August 2018.

Financial performance

The Resource Agreement 2018–19 provided:

• an operating budget of $15.613 million
• a capital budget (used for the Library collection and minor capital projects) of $3.033 million, and
• an average FTE of 136.

Actual expenditure was $15.693 million in operational funding and $2.828 million in capital funding.

Employee costs accounted for the majority of the Library’s budget, with the remaining funds largely spent on the collection. Collection expenditure in 2018–19 comprised:

• information resources (including database and news services subscriptions)—$2.306 million (operational funding)
• reference serials and monographs—$0.439 million (capital funding)
• digitisation—$0.667 million (capital funding)
• press clips—$0.137 (capital funding).

The major pressures on the Library’s budget in 2018–19 were cost increases for collection resources of around five per cent over the previous financial year, exacerbated by the fall in 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 internal variations to anticipated expenditure on employee and collection costs (both operational funding).

Collectively, the Library was underspent on employee costs by 2.5 per cent ($0.337 million). Research Branch employee costs were underspent by 6.2 per cent ($0.585 million). A number of factors contributed to this, including recruitment timelines. For Library Collections and Databases Branch, employee costs were overspent by 9.6 per cent ($0.279). This was the result of variations to monthly salary capitalisation claims. The small underspend in the Office of the Parliamentary Librarian ($0.031) was the consequence of the part absence of a senior manager due to work-related injury.

Collection costs were over-spent by 17 per cent ($0.334): this enabled the Library to renew collection resources despite vendor-imposed price increases and the weakened Australian dollar. The underspend from employee costs was directed to the collection allocation for this purpose.

The underspend of $0.205 million in the Library’s capital budget was primarily the result of a delay in completing the procurement and contracting of new Library systems. The final payment for this work ($125,000) has been rolled-over to 2019–20. In addition, the Electronic Media Monitoring Service (EMMS) data remediation did not progress as planned due to delays with associated ICT projects.

A more detailed breakdown of budget and actual expenditure can be found in the financial tables.

Figure 15: Parliamentary Library budget 2005–06 to 2019–20

Figure 16: Parliamentary Library budget (resource agreement) and expenditure 2016–17 to 2018–19

Financial outlook

The Librarian and the Secretary DPS agreed the Library’s 2019–20 Resource Agreement on 27 June 2019. It will be considered by the incoming JSCPL at its first meeting in 2019–20, before being submitted to the Presiding Officers.