David Kalisch
FASSA
bearded man in blue shirt and jacket talking to camera
in 2021 in a Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia video
15th Australian Statistician
In office
15 December 2014 (2014-12-15) – 10 December 2019 (2019-12-10)
Preceded byBrian Pink
Succeeded byDavid Gruen
Personal details
Born
David Wayne Kalisch

(1960-08-09) 9 August 1960
Adelaide, South Australia
Alma materUniversity of Adelaide
OccupationConsultant
ProfessionEconomist

David Wayne Kalisch FASSA (born 9 August 1960) is an Australian economist and public servant. From 2014 to 2019, he was the Australian Statistician in charge of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Early life and education

Kalisch was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and was educated at Brighton High School before studying for a Bachelor of Economics degree at the University of Adelaide.[1]

Public service

Kalisch joined the Australian Public Service in 1982, holding various positions including senior executive roles from 1991. In 2006, he was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing. From 2009 to 2010, he served as a commissioner on the Productivity Commission. In 2010, he was appointed as chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, a statutory agency responsible for gathering statistics on health and welfare in Australia. Following his term as Australian Statistician, Kalisch continues to contribute to public service as a consultant undertaking a range of work for public service agencies.

Australian statistician

In December 2014, Kalisch was appointed as the Australian Statistician, the senior bureaucrat in charge of the national statistics agency, the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The position had been vacant for nearly a year when Kalisch's appointment was confirmed by Treasurer Joe Hockey.[2]

In February 2015, Kalisch spoke to The Australian newspaper, where he stated that the ABS needed more funding to upgrade its computer systems and software. While lobbying the federal government for the funds, he also outlined the possibility of charging businesses for statistical data, and developing data linkages between the census or social statistical surveys, and government data such as benefits, Medicare and taxation records.[3] In December 2015, the ABS announced it would be retaining names and addresses from the census indefinitely "for the purpose of richer and more-dynamic statistics". Former Australian Statistician Bill McLennan called the decision "the most significant invasion of privacy ever perpetrated on Australians by the ABS", and questioned the legality of enforcing name collection.[4] Kalisch wrote an opinion column in Fairfax newspapers,[5] saying he had made the decision to enable the ABS to produce better statistics on economic and social outcomes.[6]

David Kalisch led the ABS' efforts to improve its gender diversity, almost doubling the number of female senior leaders in a few months[7] and became a Male Champion of Change (to support gender equality) in 2016.[8]

On the night of the census, 9 August 2016, the census website was taken down and was not restored for nearly two days. Kalisch apologised on behalf of the Bureau for the outage, stating that the site had been subject to a "malicious" denial-of-service attack and had been taken down to prevent exfiltration of census data.[9] Later investigations revealed a misconfigured Internet router that had not been tested was the underlying cause, and that no data had been stolen. IBM paid significant compensation for its role in the outage[10]

As Australian Statistician, on 15 November 2017 Kalisch announced the result of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey which had been conducted by the ABS.[11] The innovative approach taken including learnings from the 2016 Census lead the ABS to win the 2018 IPAA ACT Citizen-Centred Innovation Award[12] and be named a finalist in the Prime Minister's Excellence awards[13] for the Postal Survey.[14]

At the end of his term on Thursday 28 November IPAA ACT hosted an event[15] where Kalisch delivered a keynote presentation called Leadership Learnings from the ABS: The Lows, The Highs and Everything in Between.[16]

Kalisch was elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in November 2021 together with 36 others including the medical historian Catharine Coleborne, Nisvan Erkal, the linguist I Wayan Arka, and the anthropologist Lyn Parker.[17]

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who in Australia 2016, ConnectWeb.
  2. ↑ Thomson, Phillip (12 December 2014). "David Kalisch new Australian Statistician: Leads Australian Bureau of Statistics after tumultuous year". The Canberra Times. Archived from the original on 29 November 2015. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  3. ↑ Uren, David (3 February 2015). "Dated tools a drag for data trawl". The Australian. Archived from the original on 9 November 2021. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  4. ↑ Martin, Peter (21 July 2016). "The Bureau of Statistics endangers the census by asking for names". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  5. ↑ Kalisch, David (21 July 2016). "Give us your name on census night, it'll be safe". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  6. ↑ Martin, Peter (22 July 2016). "The ABS has been quietly holding on to our names for years". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 24 August 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  7. ↑ "Public service goes blind to solve its women problem". Canberra Times. 2 June 2016. Archived from the original on 16 November 2020. Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  8. ↑ "David Kalisch". Male Champions of Change. Archived from the original on 17 August 2019. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  9. ↑ "Census debacle puts the Prime Minister on notice". The Sydney Morning Herald. 10 August 2016. Archived from the original on 13 August 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  10. ↑ "IBM to pay over $30 million for census outage". The Australian Financial Review. 25 November 2016. Archived from the original on 12 February 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  11. ↑ Nguyen, Han (15 November 2017). "Australians had to wait an extra four minutes to hear the results of the same-sex marriage postal survey". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 27 January 2018. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
  12. ↑ "IPAA ACT | 2018 Public Sector Innovation Award Winners".
  13. ↑ "Reference at vs286790.blob.core.windows.net" (PDF).
  14. ↑ "From #censusfail to survey by mail: what's so innovative about a national postal vote?". The Mandarin. 1 March 2019. Archived from the original on 8 June 2021. Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  15. ↑ "IPAA ACT |".
  16. ↑ "Leadership Learnings from the ABS: The Lows, The Highs and Everything in Between" (PDF). 28 November 2019. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 November 2021. Retrieved 20 March 2021.
  17. ↑ "37 Leading Social Scientists elected as Academy Fellows". Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. 8 November 2021. Archived from the original on 8 November 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
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