MasterCraft Series - Sir Roland Wilson Foundation - Unlocking Linked Data for Better Policy Outcomes

Josiah Hickson

Josh is a Senior Analyst in the Trials Research and Evaluation Team within the Employment Evaluation Branch at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR). Within this role, he’s been working with administrative data as part of several randomised controlled trials that evaluate the effectiveness of Australia’s online employment services settings. Prior to joining DEWR, Josh worked in Treasury’s microdata team where his labour market analysis supported several budgets, the participation chapter of the 2023 Intergenerational Report, and the Employment White Paper.

As a Sir Roland Wilson scholar at The Australian National University Crawford School of Public Policy, Josh’s PhD thesis will focus on place-based inequality in the Australian labour market. He will explore how communities experience economic transition, and the ways that local industry structure and employer characteristics influence the wages and employment opportunities available to individuals. The use of administrative data – including ALIFE and PLIDA/BLADE – for this research will add a more detailed and precise understanding of these issues, supporting improved policy design and targeting. Josh hopes his research will help support cross-agency efforts to target entrenched disadvantage, promoting policies which boost regional resilience and support those cohorts who are most vulnerable in the labour market.

Maathu Ranjan

Maathu Ranjan is a Senior Actuary at the National Disability Insurance Agency and an experienced public sector leader specialising in fiscal sustainability, intergovernmental systems, and outcomes-focused policy reform. She has led multidisciplinary teams delivering nationally significant analysis on the performance and long-term sustainability of the NDIS, advising Agency Executive, Board, and central agencies during major reform periods.

She is a Sir Roland Wilson Scholar undertaking a PhD in Economics, Policy and Governance at The Australian National University Crawford School of Public Policy. Her research uses linked administrative data to examine how disability policy settings influence diagnostic practices, labour market outcomes, and long-term system sustainability. Her work has informed national reform processes, including the 2023 NDIS Review, and contributed to ministerial decision-making and broader public policy debate. She was awarded the 2025 Joan Uhr Prize for outstanding public policy research.

She is President-Elect, Council member and Fellow of the Actuaries Institute and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary. Maathu is widely recognised for translating complex evidence into practical, policy-relevant insights.

Sharon Rosenrauch

Sharon is Principal Behavioural Scientist and Director of the Behavioural Science Unit at the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. For nearly a decade, Sharon has played a leadership role in promoting the use of behavioural science to put people at the centre of public policy, working across a range of industry, health, security and most recently energy portfolios.

She is a Sir Roland Wilson scholar at The Australian National University School of Medicine and Psychology, investigating disability and leadership in the Australian Public Service (APS). APS employees with disclosed disability continue to experience disproportionately lower promotion rates and remain over-represented in junior service-delivery roles, even following the implementation of various inclusion initiatives. Sharon's research addresses this critical knowledge gap by employing a rigorous mixed-methods approach grounded in behavioural science to identify specific barriers and enablers that affect leadership advancement for employees with disability. The resulting insights will inform the development of a behavioural intervention/s targeting the leadership selection process in APS, with potential transferability to other underrepresented groups and organisational contexts. This research represents a shift from conventional diversity management towards evidence-based approaches that deliver measurable outcomes and seeks to drive institutional transformation.

Carrie Samuels

Carrie is a Sir Roland Wilson Scholar from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), with a long career in statistical methodology and the development of linked data infrastructure. Prior to commencing their PhD, they were a Director in the Data Integration Services Branch, leading a team of data engineers to build, maintain and enhance the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA). In this role, Carrie oversaw significant expansion and enhancement of PLIDA to increase the frequency and timeliness of data updates and improve the usability of the data for researchers.

Through her work at the ABS, Carrie developed an appreciation of some common challenges experienced by government and academic researchers working with PLIDA. This inspired the topic of her PhD research at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, which aims to better understand under- and over-coverage in Australian linked data infrastructure and the impact of this on bias in person-level estimates from whole-of-population descriptive studies. Carrie hopes this research will assist both government and academia to make better use of linked data infrastructure for research, policy formulation, and evaluation.