 So thanks everyone for joining us at this 15th meeting of the sensitive data community of practice. So this community of practice is co-facilitated by the ARDC, the Australian data archive and ARNET. And for those of you who may be new to the community, it's a place where we come together from a wide range of disciplines and positions who will deal with sensitive research data and talk about the shared challenges and opportunities around working with that data. So I'd like to begin by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we're meeting and pay my respects to elders past and present. For me, that's the Wajak Nungar people. And I'd like to do a little bit of housekeeping to start with. So we have a community document where we'll be taking notes. I'll pop a link to that in the chat in just a moment. Because there are so many of us, I have hopefully sent you all to be on mute as you join and you may not at the moment be able to unmute yourself. It's just so that we can all hear ourselves think. Later on, when we get to the discussion section, I may be able to unmute you. But otherwise, if you have any questions as we run through the presentation, if you could enter them into the chat and then we can address them at the end of the presentation. So today, we are very lucky to have Dr. Lisa Strelan with us from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and she'll be taking us through the IACIS code of ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. And this is, I think, a really interesting topic for our community because working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander data has both a lot of shared properties with other types of sensitive data. So issues around government, security, access, that kind of thing. But then also, there are some more unique elements to do with things like community consent that we need to consider. So I'm really excited to have so many of us here to hear Lisa presenting this topic. I will let Lisa get started. Excellent. Thanks, Nicola. And welcome, everybody. I would also like to extend my acknowledgement to the traditional owners of the country in which we're meeting. For us, that's the non-alcohol country. And to acknowledge the unceded sovereignty of those peoples around the country and to acknowledge the importance of the topic we're talking about today for the recognition and protection of the rights of Indigenous people to control their own heritage. And that's pretty much the foundation on which the IACIS code is founded. We don't have a huge amount of time today. It's just an hour together. So this will be a bit of a quick tour of the code. And we will be offering some training around the code that goes a bit more in depth over the next 12 months. So there may be an opportunity for you to find out more if it has particular relevance to your work and you feel like you need more information. Today, in terms of the outline of the session, sorry, Lauren's trying to keep up with me. So Lauren's driving the PowerPoint because I need to see my notes. So apologies for that. So we really just want to provide an introduction to the new IACIS code of ethics. Explore a bit about what we consider to be Indigenous data and therefore covered by the code to give you a bit of an introduction about why you need to know about the code and how to use it and an overview of the principles and how they might apply to Indigenous data. If we've got time and interest, we can also talk a little bit about applying for ethics clearance and what ethics committees might be looking for in relation to Indigenous data when they're applying a code. So firstly, it's probably useful to locate the IACIS code in our Australian research framework for ethical and responsible conduct of research. And most of you will be familiar with the first two documents, the primary documents in relation to ethical and responsible conduct. At the top of the tree is the Australian Code for Responsible Conductive Research. It's a principles-based document and it's binding on all researchers in Australia, particularly applicable to those in the university sector and the publicly funded research sector, but is also relevant to any of you who are conducting research within government or industry. The code was revised in 2018 and has particular reference to responsibilities of researchers in relation to engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And from that, from the code, it also has some really great guides and supporting references and most of you will be aware that one of those includes the management of data and information in research. Sitting below the Code of Conduct is the national statement on ethical conduct in human research. That applies to research that involves human participants. So any research involving human participants must adhere to the national statement and involving human participants includes their data. So it doesn't actually require research to be talking to the humans. It actually applies whenever you are working with people's data, which is important for us. The IANTSA's code really speaks to both of those. It is a code of ethics, but it also touches on some of the issues that are raised in the Code for Responsible Conduct, including things like authorship and collaboration. So the code of ethics is consistent with both those documents. It speaks to both those documents and basically looks at how you apply the foundations of ethics and responsible conduct in an Indigenous context. The national statement itself has a chapter on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. That's currently being revised, but again, the code elaborates on how to apply those principles appropriately in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. Many of you will also be aware that there are specific other guidelines that might apply to your research if you're doing animal research, clinical research, genomics, those kind of things. So we won't talk too much about that, but just so that you're aware, there are other codes that may apply to your particular work. There's also ones around evaluation and quality assurance. Sorry, Lisa, I think we may have lost your sound. There we go. Brilliant. Back again. Not sure where you lost me, but hopefully. Oh, just 20 seconds ago. OK, so what is Indigenous data? So let's start from there. So Indigenous data, if you didn't hear me, refers to any information or knowledge regardless of its format that is about or may affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples collectively or individually. The in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research, the idea of collective impact is actually really significant as well as what we're used to, which is things that are concerned with individuals and individual data, individual consent. When you're talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander data, you're talking you're looking at also obtaining having a responsibility to the collective. So Indigenous peoples as peoples, as groups that may be impacted by the research. So that's a fairly broad definition, but that definition is relatively consistent with the world is consistent with the other framework documents. It's. The questions about about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and we'll talk a bit more about what, you know, about means and also might affect when you're looking at working with Indigenous data. We're looking at the risks and implications for Indigenous people. When we talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research involving data, we're also talking about collections and archival collections. So that is more the nature of information. So archival research is covered by the code in relation to the use of data. We do follow the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty that have been established here and internationally, and in particular the interpretation of principles. For example, the fair principles and looking at the Indigenous aspects of that that have been established for those of you who are not aware. There's the Global Indigenous Data Alliance principles called the care principles that you should be aware of and they're outlined in the code as well. Before we go through the principles, I just want to talk briefly about why all of you need to know about the code. First of all, you want to use the code in order to ensure you're conducting Indigenous data projects ethically and with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. There are... There is guidance in the national statement and the other guides that are associated with the key... the two key framework documents. But the code of ethics goes into much more detail, particularly around how you can structure engagement and collaboration and particularly Indigenous leadership of your research in order to comply with the code. We do have a guide that supports the code, which has a lot more detail about the implementation of the principles and we will be producing more and more resources. Certainly we will be producing resources around data use and data management to support your work. A lot of the feedback we get is that people are really keen to apply the code but would very much like to understand more about the how. So we're keen to also explore any examples that you have where you've had successes in relation to Indigenous data. We'll be certainly looking for case studies and examples that we can point to of good practice in relation to Indigenous data management. It's also important to acknowledge that we can talk a little bit later about the difference between applying the code and actually the principle that all research must be ethical, but not all research requires ethical clearance and that sometimes a really challenging boundary in relation to data, particularly heavily data-based research that's not necessarily, as I said, engaging with particular individuals and communities. So looking at archival or data reuse projects that can be a really blurry line when you're not actually engaging with communities directly or with individuals directly. So we can talk a little bit more about that and I suspect that might be a source of some of the questions and discussions as we move through. And we do have our own ethics committee, which is a specialist ethics committee, a specialist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Ethics Committee. And if you do need advice specifically about Indigenous research data projects, you're more than welcome to put your applications and projects to our committee. And Lauren is always at the end of the email or the phone to give you some assistance and guidance in how to navigate your particular projects through that process. So what is the framework for the IAAC ethics code? So we really focused around four main principles. At the heart of those four principles is the notion of integrity, which sits at the basically at the heart of all ethics, really, and that goes to the why and who should apply the code. In terms of compliance, we do rely on the integrity of researchers and the integrity of institutions to actually guide our ethics framework in Australia, and that's no different for the IAAC's code. The trick then is to look at how, in particular, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research projects look different or may look different to research that you're familiar with. And the principles that apply in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research are the concept of Indigenous self-determination, first and foremost, the concept of Indigenous leadership of research, impact and value of research and the sustainability and accountability of research. Those principles in the code are further elaborated in relation to responsibilities for each of those and we won't go too far into that given the time, but I will give a brief introduction to the four principles. So about principle one. So principle one is the concept of Indigenous self-determination and is underpinned by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People and the rights that accompany that, the right to self-determination, in particular, control over heritage and the right to develop in ways that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people see as important to themselves. Those principles of the right to be involved in research that affects Indigenous people and also the recognition of the collective nature of Indigenous societies and that often, particularly in relation to data, that there are collective rights and interests in relation to data that needs to be taken into account in relation to the research projects. What we're looking for really in terms of this, the principle of self-determination is that there is an understanding that Indigenous people will bring a different perspective, potentially, to the research based on their understanding of the impact that it may have on them or how they would like to be involved in the research. And therefore, we really want to see in projects that there's an explicit acknowledgement of how Indigenous people will be involved and meaningfully involved and engaged in the project. When we're describing what that looks like in practice in terms of how your applications and projects are designed, we're looking for genuine engagement, meaningful engagement, which includes that Indigenous people have genuine decision-making and involvement from both the design of the project right through to the analysis of the data and the communication of the research and the long-term storage and management of the data coming out of the research. In order to demonstrate integrity, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research needs to demonstrate Indigenous leadership. That doesn't mean that necessarily that there will be an Indigenous CI on every project. We know that that's not necessarily possible. We're not trying to sort of overburden the extraordinary Indigenous academy that we have. There are many ways in which Indigenous people can provide leadership to your research, whether that's through providing oversight of a program of research, which is often useful to think about in the context of large data sets and ongoing data projects or data gathering and analysis. So the governance of research can be reflective of Indigenous leadership, of course involvement in the research team or through genuine partnerships with organisations or groups where they, as I said, have genuine decision-making responsibility in relation to the research. It's also important that research is informed by Indigenous priorities, values, perspectives and voices. And some people might say that that's less relevant for data, but as we will sheet home again and again, data is not neutral. And data, in terms of how it was collected, how it's analysed, we bring perspectives, our own perspectives and biases to the interpretation of data. And all of those need to be checked as non-Indigenous researchers, a non-Indigenous researcher myself, making sure that we understand that data is not just data. There's a cultural context to all data, why it's collected, as I said, the way we interpret and perceive and communicate the results of that data. In terms of impact and value, the principle of impact and value, the underlying principle is that research with and about Indigenous peoples must aim to benefit Indigenous people. We can't necessarily always guarantee the outcomes of our research, but that we should have a genuine understanding that we are seeking not only to avoid harm, but to actually address the disparities in the impacts of research of the past and to actually bring benefit from the research. When we're talking about benefits, it's really important that we understand that the benefits and risks of research may be interpreted differently from an Indigenous perspective than a non-Indigenous perspective, and that needs to be at the forefront of considerations around risks and benefit. And the guide, the code and the guide both provide additional guidance on how to achieve mutual understanding of benefits and risks and how to provide evidence that you have actually achieved those considerations. One example, when we're thinking about the use of data and the kind of biases that we might bring, we really... A simple example is ensuring that we understand the diversity of Indigenous peoples in Australia and that we consider the different impacts and risks that we may have, that the research may have, particularly, for example, going to generalisations and extrapolations of findings at mass diversity that could actually do unintended harm. So again, having Indigenous perspectives and brought to bear on analysis of data is a really important way of checking that we actually have that understanding of the diverse impacts that we may have from our research and how to kind of mitigate those risks of both biases and generalisations and masking diversity. In terms of sustainability and accountability, the final principle we're looking at, particularly around data, the sustainability principle is really it goes to ensuring that the knowledge and data collected during research projects are available for use by current and future generations. So, this goes to things like your data management plans, about repatriation of data to Indigenous peoples and nations, ensuring that Indigenous people have access to data that is of importance to them and particularly important for their decision-making at the local level or the national level. So all of that gets incorporated into the code and the guide to the code. So, to give you some ideas about how to... We're managing data for the sustainability for Indigenous communities may differ from the way you might manage data more generally. So, the question then is, as I said earlier, there's a difference between understanding when the code applies and when ethical review is required. In terms of when ethical review is required, we are...we do follow the national statement and the national statement on ethical conduct and research basically says that research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must be reviewed and approved by Human Research Ethics Committee. That's currently under review and might change, but it does kind of invite the precautionary principle with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research or research that may impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that in general, you can expect that there's no... There's not really a differentiation between low-risk and high-risk. So the risk assessment that you might do in relation to other research doesn't necessarily, at the moment, apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. So research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people includes research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's data and it's kind of a rule of thumb at the moment that that must be reviewed and approved by Human Research Ethics Committee. When you are looking at which Human Research Ethics Committee, you should be looking at a qualified... What term? Qualified Human Research Ethics Committee, and that is one that has experience with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research and has members that are able to speak to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective in relation to the research. I bring back to the fact that IAASIS has a specialist committee, if any of you ever need that kind of oversight for your research. So that takes us to 12.30, so I promised I would only speak for 20 minutes, so... Please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm sure there's lots of questions you have already banked up, so we will let the father gates open and invite conversation. Fantastic. Thank you, Lisa. And yet, if you could... If you've got any questions, just pop them in the chat. I suppose I'm going to start with one. I'm quite curious about your perspective about the relationship between, say, sustainability and making data available for use for current and future generations versus how we might typically think about data access and data sharing. And I suppose particularly because I think there can often be a perspective that data sharing is something that's antithetical to how we might look at Indigenous data management. And I think it's interesting to think about that perspective of keeping data and making data available for future benefit, but how it's the same and how it's different to how we might otherwise approach data sharing. Sure. Yeah, so, you know, the general push across the research sector has been that more sharing is better, easier access to data is better. And all of you will be familiar with the fair principles, findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable. You know, the idea that researchers should have ready access to data when and if they need it, that it should be, you know, findable. And I guess the Indigenous perspective that we have tried to reflect in the code is that that is not OK, both on the principle of the kind of history of access and control of information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia and in other similarly colonised countries, but also on the principles of self-determination that are, that inherently lend themselves to Indigenous people being able to make decisions about what data is collected and available about them. So for those of you who are interested, I mentioned before about the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, which short is GEDA. So there's a website called GIDA-global.org. And there you can find kind of the answer to the fair principles, which I referred to as the care principles. And that is really that, you know, Indigenous data needs to be held and maintained and managed for the collective benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, or Indigenous people globally, that Indigenous people need to have the authority to control how their data is used and interpreted, and that they should have responsibility for how that data is managed and that the data is collected and managed in an ethical way, so in accordance with the IACIS code, for example. And in Australia, it's very easy to point to the why for that in terms of, for those of you who, I mean, all of you should be aware of concepts like deficit discourse. So deficit discourse is a general description, I guess, of the ways in which Indigenous people have been represented, whether it's in media or research, in relation to disadvantage without actual recognition of Indigenous people's strengths and the holding Indigenous people's values, worldviews and perspectives in great equal esteem to any other system of knowledge. And those concepts of deficit, and there's some great work by, for those of you who haven't seen it, by Maggie Walter, who's a Palawa Indigenous academic, Australian academic, who's got some great, quite easily available, I think, on the Web, I think, on ARDC's website even. There's a seminar that I can recommend to all of you about the risks and the history that Indigenous data principles, data sovereignty principles seek to address. I recommend Maggie's work to all of you. Thanks, Lisa. And I think Leslie had an interesting sort of addendum to that, which is she points out that the A in fair is for access. So it's about knowing what the conditions are to access data. And she points out that fair is not equal to open. And I think that the care principles and more generally the code, I think, inform some of those access conditions that then are reflected in the A of fair. So they aren't necessarily two sets of principles that are in opposition, but rather principles that sort of inform one another. Yeah. Thanks, Leslie. And thanks, Nicola. Yes, that's very much the case. I wouldn't go so far as to say the A in fair is enough, hence the introduction of the care principles. But that's exactly right. So even the fair principles were never intended to be open slather. And that appropriate access is part of understanding that principle of accessible. So we've had a question about breach. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that brings me back to the central point of ethical framework, which is integrity. So in Australia, we actually have a really strong ethics system because we have a fairly centralized research funding system. And the collaboration between the NHMRC, the Australian Research Council and Universities Australia in publishing both the co-responsible conduct and research in the national statement provides a really strong foundation for ethics in Australia. And the code fits into that framework. So in terms of responsibilities and compliance with the code, the code, the IASUS code is a requirement of any funding provided by NHMRC and ARC as well as IASUS and also any research that's conducted through the National Indigenous Strands Agency or funded by them. So the compliance really comes from the requirement that people comply with the code on the way in, so in the funding sense. And then the principles of ethical review. So it's consistent really with the other ethics framework documents. In terms of responsible conductive research, there are specific remedies and processes within universities and any research institution that is bound by the code of conduct in relation to breaches of the code itself, code of conduct itself. So that's really where we fit into the systems that you already have in place within your universities in terms of your responsibilities to your ethics committees that give you clearance and your responsibilities under the relevant policies in relation to responsible conduct. Thanks. So we've had a request. Someone just said, I am very keen to see use cases and best practice examples for research data management plans. Do you have any examples that you can share or anything that you can point us to? I'm going to ask. Lauren, we have examples. We are developing a resource specifically to showcase some of those examples and draw out the lessons learned. If anyone does need some tips, we also have kind of a log of advice from our ethics committee around data management plans. There is some fairly detailed material in the guide as well in relation to data management plans and also some of the background issues around intellectual property and indigenous cultural and intellectual property that can help in managing, developing those data plans. And there's also a bit of information around data governance. So looking at ways in which you might establish data governance committees or those kind of overarching governance to guide, especially when you've got big sets of data, to be able to help you guide access to that. There's some really good examples out there. Some are new and emerging. And there's some really great examples, one that I'm part of, which is the My Co-I study of the cultural determinants of well-being. And there's some information on that website about how they have gone about their indigenous data governance. It's a great example. And we'll also be having a session at the IATS summit if any of you are going to make your way to Adelaide in at the end of May, start of June. We'll be having a bit of a focus on putting the principles into practice. Thanks, Lisa. I might chase up with you afterwards for some of those links and put them into our community document so that everyone can access them. I have an interesting question here. Research that impacts indigenous peoples could be interpreted extremely broadly. How is this interpreted in order to be effective? Yeah. Yeah, it can be anything. So the way that we address it in the code is to look at. So there is a definition of Aboriginal and Torres Torres Islander research in the code that you can refer to. I'm just trying to bring it up in detail so that I don't lead you astray. Have you got it there? So particularly when you're looking at data that may incidentally involve Aboriginal and Torres Torres Islander people, that doesn't necessarily mean that our code is invoked at that stage. But for example, if the data reveals something particular that's particularly unique to the Aboriginal and Torres Islander cohort and you wish to do particular further research on that part of the data, then we would be looking for you to get ethical clearance and to apply the principles of the code to that. So it's not meant to apply the code to absolutely all research in Australia. I think it is incumbent on us as researchers in Australia to think about whether there is an Aboriginal and Torres Islander perspective or unique attribute that could bring value to our projects, whether we should actually design our projects differently. But the definition that Lauren's just brought up there in terms of the code gives you a bit more specific guidance as to when you are actually looking at Aboriginal and Torres Islander research. Thank you. Do you think people need to go through it today? Just so that you know it's there? Yes, I think that's... How has the code been shared with government departments who rely heavily on Indigenous communities for research activities? Yeah, so we worked very closely with Commonwealth agencies in particular at this stage. We will be making training available to territory governments in the normal course of things. We've actually been doing some really interesting work with the National Indigenous Australians Agency over the last two years under a partnership agreement to train their staff both as researchers themselves, so using data about Aboriginal and Torres Islander people, but also as commissioners of research. So in the way that they structure their evaluations and their engagement, particularly with Aboriginal and Torres Islander organisations and communities. So there's a lot of work still to do in relation to that. There's also been some really important work done by the Aboriginal and Torres Islander Productivity Commissioner, Romley Mokak, who did a review or did a report and a kind of a proposal for a Commonwealth Indigenous Evaluation Strategy, which has ethics as one of its core principles or core pillars and is again consistent in terms of the principles of the code to be applied in evaluation. So there's kind of those two things around general kind of accessing Aboriginal and Torres Islander data and making decisions around policy and programs that are heavily reliant on data reuse. So educating governments about the fact that that is research and requires an ethical approach. And then there's the kind of commissioning of research. And the principles of the code can also be applied in relation to policy design. So because the principles are based around Indigenous partnership, about genuine partnerships and engaging Indigenous people as decision makers in research, the principles are actually equally applicable to contemporary debates around what good policy looks like in terms of code design and delegating or devolving decision-making to the local communities who are best placed to understand what's going to work in their own communities. And I think that ties us really interestingly onto another observation and question that we have here. This person says, I am a researcher by background but now work mainly with nonprofits to help them monitor, evaluate and learn from their programs, seeking formal ethical approval is often not feasible in the scope time and intention of the evaluation. Any advice? I've been working recently evaluating a service that's from a youth service that's not Aboriginal-led but 60% of their clients are Aboriginal. In that case, we did get formal ethical approval but it took a very long time and thus cost and unfortunately didn't add much value. I'd argue that wasn't necessarily ethical either. Yeah, so the evaluation sector is interesting in the fact that we've been very clear that evaluation often involves research and therefore the code should apply. And one of the things we have been working with NIAAA about to kind of improve that evaluation practice is that they need to take account of ethics in the way they fund evaluations, the time they provide but also the way that they actually assess, you know, requests for tender. So looking at the cultural competency of the evaluation team and actually asking them to address ethics in the way they structure their RFQs. So that's front-end loading it and for the commissioners of the evaluations to actually understand the value of ethics and ethical clearance has been a really important piece of work with that Commonwealth agency that of course doesn't help those of you who are working with others. So I think we are seeing an improvement in the quality of the applications that we're getting to our RAC from particularly, you know consultancy companies that are not used to necessarily putting in ethics applications. So for some, sometimes it's really a challenge for people who have never been through the ethics process to get through in a timely manner because they often get asked to come back and to resubmit or to make changes and that can take a significant amount of time. So instead of getting it through in a couple of months you're actually waiting six months down the track. So we can provide some support I guess in terms of for our ethics committee our secretariat provides support to make sure that the applications themselves are in the have the best chance of actually getting through on their first go. There are some, again we will be providing some guidance specifically for evaluation clients. I think for those of you who are involved in doing evaluations where it's just not feasible to get through in the time that's available I think it's important just to remember that you can still apply the principles and ensure that your research is ethical regardless of whether clearance is actually required or can be done. Thank you Lisa. How much evidence of Indigenous involvement and leadership is required? Often Indigenous investigators at my university feel this is an obstacle for them because we request a formal and detailed research agreement. So where would you like to bring it home? Sorry. I don't think that I'll have one. Oh, here we go. Yes, so it is often challenging in relation to for Indigenous investigators to be asked to kind of to demonstrate their own leadership and their own cultural capability and we understand that but there are still other aspects of the code that will benefit all researchers Indigenous and non-Indigenous in relation to guidance around data management or ICIP, so those kind of things. There is the requirement for a formal and detailed research agreement. The reason that we recommend a research agreement be put in place is because particularly around ICIP so Indigenous cultural intellectual property is not well protected by Australian law so that often the laws around intellectual property can actually dispossess Indigenous people of their cultural property. And so if we do want, if community wants to retain copyright for example over the data or ownership of the data then sometimes that actually requires a legal form in order for that to happen. There are other ways other than a formal agreement that you can actually address some of the issues in relation to the principles of leadership and that can go to how Indigenous people are involved as authors, researchers, collaborators and communicators of the research. So by, and the ARC and HTMLC and University of Australia guides that support the code of conduct are quite useful here when they talk about, in terms of authorship for example, an author can be someone who makes a significant intellectual contribution to the work. It doesn't necessarily require somebody to hold a pen. So that's an important principle to understand in terms of where the intellectual contributions are coming from and how you might recognise those. So, but again it's really important to ensure that that understanding of ownership, distribution of benefit, recognition of the contributions that is a shared understanding right from the start. So if there is no formal agreement in place there must be other ways in which you can evidence that you have informed consent from the individuals in the communities involved in your research. Thank you. Okay, any tips on starting conversations around this with a set of Aboriginal research without reversing to a paternalistic approach? Yeah, it's, we do put a lot of, when, as non-Indigenous people engaging in research, being cognisant of placing burdens on our Indigenous colleagues to educate us and that can be frustrating for them and difficult for us. I think understanding your own cultural capability and competency and whether you are best placed to do this research is a really good start in terms of your own critical thinking. And going in with understanding that you may be carrying your own biases is an important way of actually bridging that gap and coming to those conversations authentically and generously on your part. So being understanding of what, understanding that there's stuff that you just don't know and being able to seek advice about how to best structure your research. That's really, you know, my best advice is to go with that sort of authentic and genuine understanding of your own limitations and where you think you can contribute and where you think you need assistance. There was also a follow-up to the evaluation question about, and this is quite a common thing that there was a comment there that the application itself or the project itself was sound, but the committee may actually be the problem. And I think this is one of the challenges that we all have, that we have across the research sector is ensuring that committees are actually competent to apply the principles of the code and to understand the nuances, particularly around data projects. We will be making training available to HREX. But as I said, if you're in doubt, then please don't hesitate to access the iAccess Research Ethics Committee who have more experience, I guess, in terms of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. We are getting an increased demand on our ethics committee, so we are meeting more regularly. So if you've ever tried to access our committee before, oh, poor Judy. And it was an Aboriginal hatred. So I feel for you in terms of some of the challenges that we have in terms of getting through ethics clearance. So by all means, use us if we can be of help in the future. Brilliant. Okay, I have one here asking about when ethical approval might be required. And they say, okay, a research study on an issue that includes ancillary Aboriginal peoples data, e.g. a study of respiratory diseases in New South Wales, geographical areas for all of the population, but adjusting for age, gender, socioeconomic index and percentage of Aboriginal population. So data that's coming from the ABS. So if you're adjusting for percentage of the Aboriginal population, is that a point where you need to consider this to be some Indigenous research or I'm not expecting you necessarily to tell us exactly where that line falls. But I think it's an interesting question. Yeah, and we have had this discussion. We had this discussion with our advisory group in relation to framing the code itself. And that's why we sort of try to be explicit about where the target population is not explicitly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but includes a significant number or the outcomes may be significantly different. That that's not necessarily going to be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. But if you want to start commenting on what that means for Aboriginal people or you want to pull out that data and interrogate it more closely, that's when we would recommend that you ensure that you have Indigenous perspectives and leadership in relation to the analysis of that data so that you don't ask the wrong questions of the data or make the wrong judgments about what the data is telling you. Thanks. So in your experience, does the responsibilities of navigating the IAPSIS code fall on central research or ethics departments or on research data management or research support areas? I would say all of the above. So in terms of applying, you know, as researchers, we have a responsibility to understand our obligations under the code and under the other two key documents in relation to responsible and ethical conduct and research in Australia. Institutions have responsibilities and commissioners of research have responsibilities. So at each of those points, we try to articulate in the code where those responsibilities lie. So under the responsibilities under each principle, we have directed to where we think this... What we think the responsibilities A-track specifically might be, what we think the responsibility of institutions might be and where we think the responsibility of the researcher lies. So we've tried to articulate that quite clearly about what this principle means for each of those particular groups. Brilliant. And someone's just asked, is there any advice on the point at which a project should come to A-track during the engagement stage? The A-track may need help in this staged review process. Yes, that's a challenge too, in terms of how much work do you do before you go for ethics clearance? Our ethics committee's guidance tends to be that... You know, we want engagement to start at the design stage. And it may be that you want to seek ethics approval specifically for that design phase. Why you might do that is if you want to, for example, publish the design... publish about the design phase, or to use data that you collect, so interviews that you might conduct in that design phase, if you want to use them later in the research. So if you think that you're developing something that's particularly innovative in terms of methodology and in terms of the co-design process and you might want to publish that, then we would suggest that you get ethical approval beforehand. The reason you might do that is because, again, those questions about who's actually providing intellectual input to that design, is it actually... You know, we don't want to end up in a situation where researchers are publishing about and claiming ownership of a process that Indigenous people... You know, reflects Indigenous people's values and worldviews and ways of working. And then that suddenly becomes published in proprietary. So those are the kind of risks that we would be looking for in that design phase that you've addressed, those intellectual contributions and the contributions from the participants in the research. So you can get ethical approval for a design phase. And it means that you won't have necessarily the aims of the project articulated in detail or the survey questions. So you would come back to the ethics committee for a second stage once you've actually gone through that with your research partners and developed those things. So that's certainly an option. So really, you know, yeah, it's kind of a... I wouldn't say it's a rule, but kind of a rule of thumb. If you are going to publish the results of your design phase, then the precautionary approach would be to get ethics review for that phase. Thanks. And we are just about to come up to time, but I think that was an interesting segue into for situations where the institution will have IP and be attributed as the primary author, are there any examples for providing attribution to communities? Maybe that's something, if we're after examples and you have some that we can share those after the meeting. I actually saw a wonderful example last week where one of the co-authors was the river. That was the subject of the research. So things are changing in terms of people's expectations, but also what we perceive as possible and appropriate in terms of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. So keep your ears and eyes peeled for really innovative and changing ways of improving our practice. Brilliant. And I think that's a lovely place for us to end. Thank you, everyone, so much for your participation and your questions. Thank you again, Lisa, for a really fantastic talk. And I will see you all hopefully at the next meeting. And yes, I'll be sharing the recordings. So you can share this with your colleagues. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. And sorry if we missed your question, but we'll see if we can follow up by email as well.