This document summarizes the efforts of CSIRO's Data61 division to improve gender diversity in its workforce. It notes that as recently as 2020, only 21% of Data61's approximately 400 staff were women. Over the past 18 months, Data61 launched a growth campaign to recruit over 100 new staff, with a focus on diversity. As a result, 55% of new hires have been women, bringing the overall percentage of women at Data61 up to 29%. The document outlines some of the key measures Data61 took in its recruitment approach, including cultural change management, careful tracking of progress, using specialist recruiters, focusing on senior women leaders, and being proactive rather than passive in outreach. It emphasizes the

1. Australia’s National Science Agency
Addressing
Gender
Diversity at
CSIRO’s
Data61
Jon Whittle
Director, CSIRO’s Data61
@Jon_Whittle_
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2. Naughtin C*, Hajkowicz S*#, Schleiger E,
Bratanova A, Cameron A, Zamin T, Dutta A
(2022) Our Future World: Global megatrends
impacting the way we live over coming
decades. Brisbane, Australia: CSIRO.
CSIRO recently released it’s Our Future World report, a large scale study of
quantitative and qualitative data that offers strategic insights on future megatrends
in society: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/data/our-future-
world
The report identifies 7 megatrends that will shape society in the next 20 years.
Two of these will clearly require an uplift in digital skills – increasingly autonomous
and diving into digital. A third will also require digital skills (unlocking the human
dimension) as people will increasingly need to work with digital technology.
But, in fact, all of the megatrends are underpinned by digital – as all are undergoing
digital disruptions – and so all megatrends point to a sharp rise needed in digital jobs
and skills
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3. Jobs and Skills Summit
This trend was emphasised at the Australian Government’s Jobs and Skills Summit in
2022.
Two key themes emerged from this summit: (1) the importance of digital jobs and
skills for a strong economy, and
(2) The pressing need for digital tech to be more inclusive. The Tech Council of
Australia estimates Australia will need 1.2million tech workers by 2030 – but the
summit identified that the country needs to look in non-traditional places to fill this
need (e.g., upskilling of non tech workers, a more diverse workforce, those returning
to work)
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4. Women in IT jobs
Women in Technology: Maximising Talent, Minimising
Barriers. Heather Foust-Cummings, Laura Sabattini, Nancy
Carter. 2008
% women in
computing jobs
Women in ICT in statistics: how does your company
stack up? Bayside Group, 2022
2000 2022
The depressing news, however, is that despite decades of encouraging more
diversity in tech (and in IT, in particular), these initiatives have had little effect. By
some stats, there were more women in IT jobs twenty years ago than there are now!
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5. ~400 staff
350+ affiliates
across Australia
Home of
Australia’s
National AI
Centre
Leading the
Next
Generation
Graduates
Programs
200+
Data-driven
projects
Facilities
Mixed-Reality
Lab
Robotics
Innovation
Centre
Host of
Australia’s
DARPA
Robotics
Challenge Team
130+
patent families
18+
spin-outs raising
$150 million in
capital
CSIRO’s Data61 at a glance
For the last two years, CSIRO’s Data61 has made a significant and sustained effort to
address gender diversity in its workforce. With around 400 research, engineering and
support staff working in AI, cybersecurity, software etc., Data61 is Australia’s largest
collection of digital tech R&D in the country. Yet, back in 2020, only 21% of our staff
were women….
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6. Snapshot
21% women
2021 2022
29% women
55% women
(new hires)
Over the last 18 months, Data61 has changed its approach to recruiting new staff.
With a candidate-first approach, we launched a “growth campaign” in October 2021
to attract up to 100 new staff – 25% of our overall workforce. We made a
commitment to put diversity (in particular, gender diversity) first.
As a result, 55% of new hires during this period have been women, taking our overall
stats to 29%.
We are far from done, but we’ve at least turned the ship around and set it in the
right direction.
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7. CONFIDENTIAL
The approach was based on our “growth campaign”, which is still active (we are
hiring!)
We put in place a number of measures to focus on diversity first. These included:
(i) Cultural change management to get hiring managers on board and engaged with
the mission, which was to move towards 33% women
(ii) Checks and balances to carefully track progress and intervene where necessary
– this included, for example, the Director personally approving all roles
(iii) The use of specialist recruitment agencies to proactively identify and reach out
to women candidates
(iv) A “campaign” oriented approach to recruitment based not on individual
position descriptions but based around broad capability areas – which allowed
us to fit a role to the candidate rather than the other way around
(v) A dedicated focus on bringing in senior female leaders. For example, the Data61
leadership team is now 58% women
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8. •Be proactive over reactive
•Focus on leaders
•Be bloody-minded
What did we do?
We introduced a whole range of interventions (keep an eye on social media for more
details coming out soon).
Analysing what worked, it really comes down to three key things:
(1) Proactively go out to find diverse candidates. Putting a job ad out and waiting to
see who applies does not work from a diversity perspective. You need to get
hiring managers on board to go out and talk to their networks and actively reach
out to potential candidates
(2) Whilst we hired at all levels, a key focus was on bringing in senior women leaders
– this tends to lead to a tipping point because it catches the attention of staff
who start to see the change, and senior leaders bring other women with them
(3) Be stubborn – changing the dial on diversity is hard. There were so many points
in the process where it seemed too hard and it would have been easy to give in.
It’s essential to have senior exec leaders “hold the line” and refuse to
compromise.
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9. Here is a selection of just a few of the amazing Data61 women (both new recruits
and existing staff).
We are not claiming success – whilst the campaign is going in the right direction, we
have only addressed recruitment so far. A much bigger part of the puzzle is
addressing overall culture to support a diverse workplace. Time will tell if the initial
gains we have achieved can be sustained.
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