Joan ten Brummelaar

Director, Service Quality Analysis Evaluation and Program Performance Branch, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations

Joan has almost 20 years of market research experience across a range of federal government departments. After completing a degree in psychology she commenced her career at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, where she worked on a range of questionnaire development projects including the census, a crime victims survey and various labour force supplementary surveys. In the late 80s, she was away for two brief periods on maternity leave, but returned soon after the birth of her first child on a permanent part time basis.

In 1990, Joan transferred to the Employment Evaluations Section of the Evaluation and Monitoring Branch at the (then) Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA), where she worked on the a variety of program evaluations. She was promoted in this branch, before setting off to the United Kingdom with her family in 1993. During the 18-month overseas stint, Joan worked in education and for the British Interactive Multimedia Association.

In late 1995, Joan returned to DEETYA, where she was responsible for the design and management of several client satisfaction surveys for the department. Feeling in need of a change from understanding the needs of job seekers and employers, Joan moved to the Family Court of Australia where she managed the Information and Research unit and developed one of the first satisfaction surveys of clients of the judicial system.

Joan returned to DEWR in August 2000 to manage the Service Quality Analysis Section. She manages a team of six researchers, who develop and manage a variety of quantitative and qualitative research projects and use existing administrative data to provide input to policy and service development.

While technically a buyer of research services given her role in the public service, Joan adopts a partnership approach with the consultants with whom she works and usually finds that at the end of a project the consultants have learned as much from her as she has from them.

Joan says ‘QPMR is a great way of recognising the skills and experience of market researchers and makes it easier to feel confident about the skills of the consultants that I use’.

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