Every five years, the FRDC re-aligns organisational focus with contemporary end-user needs in the process of developing an R&D Plan. FRDC’s R&D Plan 2020-25 seeks to respond to the ambition of the diverse stakeholders from across fishing and aquaculture who helped create it, focussing on big, cross-sectoral issues of national importance, whilst at the same time ensuring that jurisdictional and sector needs are met. The R&D Plan 2020-25 focuses on outcomes in five key areas, supported by five enabling strategies that are designed to make pursuit of those outcomes faster and easier.
FRDC's R&D Plan 2020-25 can be found here.
The FRDC prepares Annual Operational Plans (AOPs) each financial year to guide practical delivery of the current R&D Plan, describing what will be done next to enable the strategic intent to be achieved. The purpose of each AOP is to respond to dynamics affecting fishing and aquaculture in Australia, setting out strategies to achieve outcomes described within the current R&D Plan and activities that give effect to those strategies. Each AOP must also summarise income and expenditure that will underpin planned activities.
Bridging the FRDC’s R&D Plan and AOPs are five roadmaps that have been developed through broad stakeholder consultation, which seek to deliver a more systemic overview of investment. Each roadmap focuses on one of the R&D Plan’s five R&D Plan outcomes, setting out the challenges/opportunities that will be addressed, the order they will be undertaken, and how each will enable R&D plan outcomes to be achieved. This planning approach is designed to emphasise intentional strategy setting based on strong program logic, whilst allowing for adaptability and creativity in problem solving in anticipation of the increasing uncertainty and volatility faced by Australia’s fishing and aquaculture sectors.
Figure 1 FRDC’s planning process explained.
