Governance Office

Site specific assessment (SSA) forms part of good research governance and is an essential component of the responsible conduct of research. It enhances ethical and scientific quality, promotes good research practice and accountability, reduces adverse incidents and ensures lessons are learned, thus reducing the likelihood of poor performance and research misconduct.

Research governance is:

• A framework through which institutions are accountable for the research they allow to be conducted under their auspices
• A way of thinking about and managing research and applies to all individuals involved in research – staff and students, in all professional groups, no matter how senior or junior
• About how research is conducted and about facilitating good (ethical and worthwhile) research
• About responsibility and about managing risk

SSAs may be submitted to the Office for Research at any time irrespective of whether ethics approval has been granted. The SSA will not be issued until ethics approval is obtained and received by the Office. 

The SSA submission will be reviewed at application entry for completeness. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted for review. The review will begin upon submission of a complete SSA package to the Governance Office inbox at governance@mh.org.au.

For participating site submissions, the Office for Research will accept late receipt of HREC documentation as per Section 2 until ethics approval is obtained. 

In Victoria, the ERM platform is used to create the SSA form for your governance application and a complete SSA package includes the signed ERM-SSA form emailed to: governance@mh.org.au.

The Priority Review pathway provides for Site Specific Assessments (SSA) within 5 to 14 Victorian business days and is currently only available to commercially-sponsored clinical trials. More information is available on the Governance submission page.