ABARE survey of businesses in Australia's mining technology services sector, 2002
Contents
B. User Requirements, Survey Objectives, and Budget
B1 Purpose of survey
Why do you need to conduct a survey? (B1)
Note. Refers to the underlying information requirements that the survey is intended to address. For example, what problems the agency is trying to solve? What decisions need to be made? What specific policies or actions are being determined or assessed? Should detail who requires the information. Survey objectives should be included in "B2" below.
On 6 June 2001, the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources announced the Mining Technology Services Action Agenda (MTSAA). This action agenda aims to define the Australian Mining Technology Services (MTS) sector, understand the current behaviour of the sector, its growth and export potential over the next five years. To address these issues the action agenda has identified five key areas that need to be targeted:
- Response to the globalisation challenge.
- Technology, R&D development and co-ordination.
- Improving industry market share and competitiveness.
- Education and training.
- Promotion and marketing.
A team of industry and government representatives has been formed to provide co-ordinated responses to these five key areas. The Strategic Leaders Group (SLG) consists of MTS sector companies, representative industry organisations, research institutions, and Commonwealth government department members. More specific information on the MTSAA can be found at the website www.isr.gov.au/agendas/sectors/MiningTechnology.html.
The MTS survey is a key mechanism that will provide important economic and policy information on the Australian MTS sector to the Commonwealth government, MTSAA team, and industry to enable informed strategic/policy decisions to be made. The survey results will be aggregated to produce industry-wide statistics, and then ultimately published as an ABARE research report. This report will be released by October 2002.
The objective of the ABARE survey is to collect key information on MTS companies. In particular, the survey will collect information on:
- Defining the MTS sector.
- Identifying area(s) of application in the mining industry.
- Areas of Australian expertise that can be marketed both domestically and internationally.
- Past, present and future activity in the MTS sector regarding domestic and export sales revenue.
- Growth of the sector over a 10 year period.
- Australian and foreign ownership of companies.
- Location of business operations and reasons for choice of business location.
- Flow of sales (direct and indirect) to the mining industry.
- Main export markets.
- Size of company.
- Level of employee education and training and likely impediments.
- Availability and discipline of employees.
- Knowledge of current training programs.
- Research and development expenditure, collaboration possibilities and likely impediments.
- Protection and sources of competitive advantage.
- Use of the internet for business transactions (sales and purchases).
- Possible marketing mediums.
Participants’ views are also collected on what are the most important issues the MTSAA should focus on, and whether their company is willing to participate in workshops that will work towards achieving the outcomes set by the MTSAA..
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B2 Objectives
How will the survey outputs meet the needs specified in B1? (B2)
Note. Should include a brief overview of the main topics the survey will cover. If applicable, provides details of any constraints including: fixed costs, fixed sample size, fixed accuracy (eg target RSEs, Confidence Intervals), etc.
The questionnaire has been divided into five sections:
- Australian MTS production and exports.
- Employment, education and training.
- Research and development.
- Internet commerce, promotion and marketing.
- Competitiveness and other issues.
These areas aim to provide a general overview of the Australian mining technology services sector. This includes defining the MTS sector, sales revenue, size and location of business, export earnings, export regions, employee education and training issues, availability and discipline of employees, research and development, protection and sources of competitive advantage, internet sales activity, marketing mediums, and MTSAA issues.
The survey will be sent to respondents by e-mail or post, where e-mail is the preferred method of despatch.
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B3 Timetable
What is the timetable for the survey? (B3)
Note. Should include: testing, the date questionnaires are printed or finalised, the date data collection commences, the date data collection finishes, and when results will be available. SCH approval for the survey is to be obtained before data collection commences.
The survey will be sent to respondents as close to 28 February 2002 as possible. The completion date will be set at 3-4 weeks after the date the surveys are sent. Aggregated results will be presented in an ABARE research report due to DITR by October 2002.
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