Transparent costing

In order to access 80% of available SRE funds from 2010 onwards the Government is requiring all universities to participate in a Transparent Costing exercise. Transparent Costing is an accounting term used to describe a variety of processes by which the real costs of undertaking an activity (in this case Australian Competitive Grant research) are estimated.

A Transparent Costing framework has been in place in the US for many years and more recently in the UK. We expect that the Australian Government will draw heavily on arrangements already in place overseas as it develops its own model to drive SRE funding and gain a better understanding of the full costs of research.