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The CIO movements that made headlines in 2017

A year characterised by big govt IT leadership changes.

on Dec 22 2017 9:30AM

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January: What initially appeared to be a straightforward resignation later turned out to be an explosive departure from Melbourne’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade by former CIO Mary Powderly-Hughes following fraud allegations.

The Victorian Ombudsman later found the former CIO had encouraged her two sons to change their names and falsified their CVs so she could hire them to lucrative jobs within her department. The department referred the case to Victoria Police.

January: Former University of Newcastle chief information officer Sanjay Kalra secured a new role overseeing the IT shop at IP Australia after exiting the university just days prior to a major restructure.

January: Tourism Australia lured Microsoft’s former local mobility and security lead Jason Flynn to become its CIO after former IT boss David Rumsey departed.

January: Queensland's Health department recruited five new executives - chief technology officer, chief digital strategy officer, chief customer experience officer, chief solution delivery officer, and executive director of corporate services - into its eHealth Queensland technology arm. The new executives are tasked with turning around the agency's IT fortunes and driving "digital transformation" into healthcare in the state.

January: The WA Education department picked a former iiNet CIO, David Dans, as its new IT boss after its former technology chief Bevan Doyle retired from a 46-year career with the state government.

January: NSW Finance hired Marco Figueroa, the former security boss at Coca-Cola Amatil, as its new chief information security officer.

February: Former Woolworths chief loyalty and data officer Emma Gray joined ANZ Bank to work under Maile Carnegie as the bank’s first ever chief data officer. She was one of a slew of new technology executive appointments to be made after CEO Shayne Elliott took on the top job in 2016.

February: Qantas decided to give infosec its own portfolio, taking the function out of the CTO group and creating a standalone chief information security officer position that it filled with Darren Argyle from London-based data analysis firm IHS Markit.

February: Queensland Health ended a seven-month search for someone who could permanently fill the joint roles of departmental CIO and head of its e-health arm eHealth Queensland, hiring head of the Metro South Hospital and Health Service Dr Richard Ashby.

February: Paul Young left Ardent Leisure after deciding he didn’t want to relocate from the Gold Coast to Ardent’s new leadership base in Sydney. He subsequently scooped a new role at Retail Food Group just a month later.

February: The Commonwealth Bank lured Yuval Illuz from Israel to become its new chief information security officer, replacing Ben Heyes who was forced to leave the bank for health reasons in mid-2016.

February: ANZ Bank’s CISO Steve Glynn was ousted after two-and-a-half years when the bank decided to replace him with former government cyber security executive Lynwen Connick.

February: Qantas’ chief technology officer Chris Taylor resigned from the airline . He later joined Airbus in France as the head of its digital accelerator. Qantas subsequently replaced Taylor with former William Hill executive Rob James in May.

February: Bev McQuade became Adelaide University’s second-ever CIO after moving on from a lengthy stint at SA Water. She took over from Mark Gregory, who had departed for a corporate services position at Flinders University.

February: The federal Treasury department selected Eamonn Rooney, a stalwart of Canberra IT, as its new CIO after losing Peter Alexander to the Digital Transformation Agency the previous September.

February: NAB lured former Barclays Bank IT executive Patrick Wright to become its first-ever chief technology and operations officer. NAB had created the CTOO role as part of a June 2016 restructure of its leadership ranks .

February: Lockheed Martin’s former APAC chief information security officer Anthony Kitzelmann joined the Australian Digital Health Authority to lead efforts to secure Australia’s e-health records scheme.

March: Brisbane City Council CIO Sarma Rajaraman and his boss Greg Evans suddenly left the organisation in the wake of local government systems (LGS) saga with former contractor TechnologyOne. The project blew out by $60 million and resulted in contract termination and a public he-said, she-said battle between the parties until they came to a secret settlement in December.

Rajaraman later picked up a CIO role at NSW Department of Family and Community Services after former CIO Tim Hume farewelled more than five years in the position in June to become a consultant.

The council started hunting for a new CIO that same month, and appointed Bernadette Howard - formerly of Virgin Australia - to the role in July.

March: News Corp chief technology officer Alisa Bowen resigned from her role after four years to become a digital media executive for The Walt Disney Company in the US. Head of technology transformation and shared technology Dominic Hatfield took over the CTO position.

March: AUSTRAC’s IT chief Maria Milosavljevic announced her resignation from the agency to move cities and become the NSW government’s first-ever chief information security officer, in charge of infosec for the entire state public sector.

March: Jason Blackman became Carsales’ new chief information officer after veteran CIO Ajay Bhatia was promoted to the head of the online classifieds’ consumer business.

March: Vocus ousted chief technology officer Chris Deere as part of a massive business restructure that centralised technology and transformation into a new division. It later appointed transformation executive Justin Haddrick to lead the division, but he left the business after just three months.

April: Coles reinstated a CIO role it had ditched three years ago and hired former IAG digital chief Claire Rawlins to the position.

May: The Australian Bureau of Statistics appointed Steve Hamilton, previously the head of digital strategy and design at the ATO, to become its CIO after Patrick Hadley announced in February he was retiring after five years in the position.

May: The Victorian government appointed Julian Hebden its inaugural chief data officer after a four-month search.

May: The ABC anointed its first chief digital and information officerby luring Helen Clifton from across the ditch to take on the position. The creation of the new role ultimately meant former CIO Ken Gallacher left the ABC in July after more than seven years in the role.

May: Intel Australia boss Kate Burleigh resigned after five years leading the local operation. In December it was revealed she had joined as country manager for Amazon’s Alexa Skills business.

May: Origin Energy CIO Olaf Pietschner quit the energy giant to return to Capgemini after eight years in the role. He became the chief operating officer for Australia and New Zealand.

May: Former IBM and Suncorp CIO Jeff Smith offered to help out with ANZ Bank’s massive agile transformation and sit on its technology advisory panel. Smith had quit IBM earlier that month in what was later revealed to be an attempted move to AWS - a decision that spurred a trade secrets and contract breach lawsuit and a private settlement in October.

June: La Trobe University chief information officer Peter Nikoletatos resigned from the education institution to join the public sector strategy and innovation team at Optus Business.

June: Edith Cowan University’s former CIO Elizabeth Wilson left the organisation to take up the same role at the Victorian Education department. The agency had created the CIO position in March as part of an IT department restructure.

June: ANZ Bank made another appointed to its technology ranks with the hire of eBay’s former European chief operating officer Jennifer Scott as its new digital transformation and performance boss.

July: The Australian Stock Exchange lured Dan Chesterman, the former CIO for CBA’s CommSec and Private Bank businesses, to become its own IT chief after Tim Thurman quit the ASX to return to Canada and a role as chief digital officer at Paysafe Group.

July: The Immigration department’s chief information officer Randall Brugeaud quit the agency after leading it through the merger with the former Customs agency and a massive program of technology work to streamline its IT environment. It was later revealed that he had taken up a deputy statistician role at the ABS, running its $250 million transformation drive.

July: IAG lured News Corp digital executive Mark Drasutis to become its chief digital officer . IAG had dissolved its standalone digital labs division in late 2016 in favour of housing it within its ‘customer labs’ team.

July: The Australian Electoral Commission started looking for a permanent CIO after its former IT chief Lynn White moved to the Immigration department in March. David Lang - who was acting in the role in the interim - was formally appointed to the position in September.

July: PwC Australia lost its IT services chief Matt Chamley to VMware after he farewelled the organisation to take up a systems engineering role at the technology vendor. PwC took the opportunity to split his former role up into two, focused on service delivery and operations, and on cloud engineering.

July: The Defence department’s long-running chief information officer Peter Lawrence resigned from the agency for undisclosed reasons after almost five years in the role. He later relocated back to the UK.

July: Al Blake, the former CIO for the federal Environment department, returned to the public sector from a stint as a government IT analyst to become the ACT government’s chief technology officer.

August: The Tasmanian government hired its first-ever government CIO with the appointment of Glenn Lewis , the former director of information systems for the state Finance department. One of Lewis’ first tasks was the redesign the state’s six-year-old IT strategy.

August: Australian government CTO John Sheridan was named the Department of Finance’s new chief information and security officer following an internal reshuffle. He replaced the agency's former CISO Michael Hirschfield, who took up Sheridan’s old post as government procurement co-ordinator.

August: NBN Co lured Nokia’s A/NZ chief to become its new chief technology officer . Ray Owen took on the role after an internal reshuffle saw the CTO position disbanded and then reinstated.

August: Former Fortescue Metals Group IT chief Vito Forte returned to a CIO role, joining Edith Cowan University after two years at Oracle. He was tasked with transforming the digital experience for students and staff.

August: The Digital Transformation Agency poached the Bureau of Meteorology’s CIO Lesley Seebeck to becomes its chief investment and advisory officer . Her role is arguably one of the toughest in the federal government given the DTA’s remit to rein in IT spend across the public sector.

August: Flinders University lured Kerrie Campbell from the University of Adelaide to become its inaugural CIO. The role was created to "oversee a reshaped and enhanced information and digital services division" by head of corporate services Mark Gregory - Campbell's former boss and ex-CIO at UOA.

September: Telsta promoted its customer service management director Craig Hancock to become its global CISO. The telco had been without an executive in the position since Mike Burgess left after four years in November 2016.

September: The South Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet sacked its chief information officer Veronica Theriault after she was arrested and charged over dishonesty claims, just seven weeks into the job. Theriault allegedly used multiple IDs and faked a resume to get the job.

The premier’s department opted a month after to replace Theriault’s position with a CTO role that it is currently hiring for.

September: ASIC hired a new chief information officer , appointing Joanne Harper permanently into the role. Harper had been acting in the position since Wendy Bryant left for the ATO in February.

October: Victoria poached an ANZ Bank information and technology risk manager to become its first-ever government chief information security officer . John O’Driscoll is tasked with coordinating a cross-government response from agencies to cyber security incidents and leading strategic initiatives.

October: NSW Police’s long-time chief technology officer Syd Griffith was let go from the force after 25 years with the agency, following a business restructure that saw IT led by a new chief information and technology officer.

This restructure also swallowed up NSW Police’s CIO , Chris Robson, the following month, after six years in the role to make way for Gordon Dunsford, who was lured from WaterNSW to become the new NSW Police CITO.

October: Geoscience Australia technology chief Anthony Stinziani moved to the Department of Parliamentary Services as its CIO, after more than seven years with his former employer. He replaced Eija Seittenranta, who had retired in September 2016 after serving as DPS’ first-ever CIO.

November: Domain started looking for a new technology director after Paul McManus resigned to join graphic design crowdsourcing platform DesignCrowd. He’d spent four-and-a-half years in the role, and seven years across Domain and its parent Fairfax.

November: NSW’s first-ever chief clinical information officer Dr John Lambert called it quits after more than three years. He decided to ‘pause to enjoy life for a while’. NSW is currently recruiting for a new CCIO. The role is responsible for overseeing the state’s clinical IT direction.

November: Telstra hired its first customer chief technology officer, promoting Fawad Nazir from being the telco’s principal enterprise architect for strategy and innovation. It had spent a year looking for someone to fill the new customer CTO position.

November: Damon Rees ascended from his role as the NSW government’s chief information and digital officer to take over control of the state’s central service delivery agency Service NSW. The state is now looking for a new CIDO to fill the vacancy.

November: Westpac head of business integration Jayne Opperman scored a new gig as head of technology across APAC and EMEA for Citi. She had been an IT deputy at Westpac since mid 2015, when she joined the bank from ANZ.

December: Defence revealed its new chief information officer, luring Stephen Pearson from Lattice Energy to take on the role following Peter Lawrence’s departure. It is the industrial IT executive’s first time working within a government organisation. He inherits a massive program of technology works.

December: Former Telstra CISO Mike Burgess returned to the Australian Signals Directorate as its new director-general. Burgess had spent five years as the deputy director of the agency - which was then named the Defence Signals Directorate - before he joined Telstra in early 2013.

December: The chief information officer for Victoria’s super-department of jobs, transport, resources, and economic development resigned to run IT for the state’s largest electricity distribution network. Alex Jones is now the CIO at Victorian power companies CitiPower, Powercor and United Energy, replacing Chris Eriksen who left in September to join mining giant Roy Hill.

December: NAB CIO David Boyle was ousted from the bank in a restructure that dissolved his role. A month prior NAB had decided to split up the functions of the CIO into leadership positions of five new IT divisions. Boyle is now advising businesses on IT under a new consultancy business.

December: Commercial law firm Allens promoted its business applications manager Bill Tanner to CIO, filling a role that had been vacant since Phillip Scorgie left the business in May.

December: CUA chief digital officer Sue Coulter resigned from the bank after seven years to move to Hong Kong and become the group head of digital and innovation at AIA Life Insurance. The bank is working out its next steps for her replacement.

December: Department of Human Services CIO Gary Sterrenberg ended six years leading arguably the most technology-intensive government agency. He resigned to dedicate more time to his PhD, which he had been working on part-time.

December: Tabcorp CIO Kim Wenn farewelled eight years in the role - and more than a decade at the company - following the wagering giant's merger with Tatts.

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