Message from the COO: Identifying Savings Opportunities: A Review of Expenditure Trends (2019-2024)

Following last week’s update on the ANU Expenditure Taskforce, the initial phase of our analysis is focusing on identifying significant savings opportunities within high-spend and high-growth* areas.

You can see from our annual reports, ANU spent $1,487m in 2023 of which $796m was on salaries and employee on-costs and $691m was on non-salary expenditure.

Some of this expenditure is ‘tied’ to income received for particular purposes such as scholarships, philanthropic gifts, income from investments or research grants, all of which we unable to use for general operating expenses.

Other expenditure categories with constrained expenditure relate to provisions for depreciation and amortisation, borrowing costs, and superannuation provisions. You will see these called out in the annual report.

In 2023, ANU spent $475m on other expenses. Of these expenses, approximately $360 million has been classified as discretionary operational expenditure or addressable expenditure. This has been the focus of the Taskforce's efforts so far.

To date, we have reviewed a total expenditure of $194 million across several categories, including travel, software and licenses, procurement, library subscriptions, physical assets, temporary agency fees, and scholarships. These areas were chosen for our initial work due to their growth trends.

Since 2019, the following growth trends have been observed:

• Other Expenses (including travel): 2.5% growth
• Software, Licenses & IT consumables: 28.4% growth
• Repairs and Maintenance (Physical Assets): 15.2% growth
• Temporary Agency Fees: 44.1% growth
• Book Subscription Dataset: 12.8% growth
• Scholarships and Grants: 4.8% growth

I will provide the outputs and recommendations from this phase of work in the coming weeks and invite further recommendations for areas of expenditure to consider from the community.

The next phase of work is proposed to expand the review to additional expenditure areas, including consultancies, consumables, non-capital equipment, advertising, and entertainment. The Taskforce will be seeking to work with different areas across the University as we move forward.

Kind regards,

Jonathan Churchill

Chief Operating Officer

*Growth is calculated from 2019-2024 with 2024 expenditure figures based on Q2 forecasts.