The Atlas of Living Australia is a five-year project funded under the Australian Government's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Its mission is to develop a biodiversity data management system which will link Australia’s biological knowledge with its scientific and agricultural reference collections and other custodians of biological information.

This system should be:

* Authoritative - guiding users to the most relevant data resources and well-researched information for each species * Freely accessible - delivering services, tools and content for free use by all * Distributed and federated - integrating existing systems and networks to bring together the most current and complete content