If we take a wider look at the various technologies analysts tell us define Web 3.0 – or the metaverse - there are actually many that CIOs and other tech leaders should take seriously.

The internet of things (and expanded IoT – yes that’s also now a thing) virtual reality and especially augmented reality, and of course digital twins for example.

The ideas of decentralised control and individual ownership are firmly embedded in Web 3.0 as well. And regardless of whether you think blockchain and NFTs have been overhyped, it’s hard to argue they’re not going to have some role to play in the future.

In this, our final episode, we talk with Jonathan Kempe, founder and CEO of supply chain tech startup Shipz, and Johnny Serrano, CIO alumnus and global CIO at Australian mining safety company, Ground Probe, about the various opportunities - real or imagined - presented by Web 3.0, the realities of what’s been achieved to date and what we might expect to see in terms of its impact on businesses and industry in the future.

In this episode we talk to Richard Taggart, executive director digital health and innovation at Sydney Local Health District, one of Australia’s largest public health corridors, and Alan Pritchard Director of EMR and ICT Services, with Victorian public health agency Austin Health.

Two genuine warriors of digital health in Australia – and, fittingly CIO50 alumni – they discuss what they and their teams accomplished in the trenches throughout the pandemic, from managing the surge of COVID-19 cases and rush for vaccines, standing up telemedicine and virtual hospitals, transforming systems for managing patient data, and what all of this will mean for the future of digital healthcare, assuming that we will one day be in a post-pandemic world.

The program is now in its 7th year down under, and has been running for four years across the ditch, creating a proud and growing alumni group underscoring the high calibre of technology leaders operating in this part of the world.

In this episode, David Binning speaks with CIO Australia's editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly, and CIO New Zealand's editor, Cathy O'Sullivan, about their respective CIO50 programs for 2022.

Who should enter and how, what this year's judges are looking for, plus explanation of some exciting new categories that reflect the evolving nature of technology leadership in this part of the world.

The call – or rather we might say alarm – was raised by software engineer, Blake Lemoine who asked a number of questions of the LaMDA chat bot he had been working with, which communicated several eerily-human responses including its desire to be considered a person with feelings and to be formally recognised as an employee at Google. 

LaMDA stands for the Language Model for Dialogue Applications and is a family of neural language models developed by Google. 

In internal memo to some 200 Google staff, Lemoine described a chat bot he’d been working with as a seven-year-old child that wants the world to be a better place for all.

Suffice to say Google issued a prompt response dispelling the idea that it was sentient, with Lemoine placed on forced leave.

Leaving aside all the predictable analogies with sci-fi books and films, the incident does raise interesting questions about the current capabilities of AI systems and what we might expect to see in coming years. 

We already have voice-driven systems – as well as chatbots – able to discern customer sentiment, so it’s not too farfetched to imagine more emotionally intuitive and responsive systems, say supporting sales and marketing, as well as health, in particular mental health.

Tune in to hear a fascinating conversation with Tathagat Banerjee, founder and CEO of Sydney-based startup Video Translator AI, as well as Julien Eps, head of the School of Engineering and Telecommunications with the University of NSW and a member of the NSW Smart Sensing Network.

As you’ll hear, while true sentience – itself a debatable term – is no doubt a stretch, Blake Lemoine’s experience serves to remind us that AI has nevertheless come a long way in a short period of time, with exciting new applications that effectively mimic human capabilities already in use.

Fear arising both from perceptions of AI as something super complex and other worldly, and from the rising chorus of voices concerned that the ‘machines were coming’ and jobs, life as we know it was under threat, all amid a seeming torrent of ethical and legal challenges – real and imagined.

On the other end of the spectrum, many organisations still viewed AI as some sort of panacea, increasing pressure on tech leaders to deploy solutions that had it written on the tin, with inevitable disappointing results. Lack of consultation and buy from the c-suite and wider workforce was among many other problems cited as impeding the progress of AI across Australian enterprises.

So where are we now? Joining us to try and answer this far-from simple question is Michael Ciavarella, former CIO with Swimming Australia and now CTO with online fashion retailer, A&S Labels, Professor Michael Blumenstein, Deputy Dean research and innovation with the University of Technology, and Louise Francis, ANZ country manager and research director with IDC.  

Coming amid a sharp rise in cyber attacks throughout the pandemic, it nevertheless delivered a jolt to many Australians, seeing such an established and recognised brand fall victim to something like this. As we know the attack led to some broadcast and other operations being seriously disrupted, as well as an almost 3 percent dip in the share price as news got to market.

For media tech veteran, Damian Cronan, Nine’s chief information and technology officer, it was a career shaping experience like nothing he’d faced before, kicking off around 2am on the morning of Sunday May 28 last year. By his side was the newly appointed group director of IT security, Celeste Lowe, one of Australia’s most respected cyber experts.

Together they provide a candid and insightful look at how one of Australia’s biggest media companies dealt with its biggest ever cyber threat; how the ‘war room’ was created, what immediate actions were taken, and how the experience has shaped the organisations future strategies and technology decisions.

Few would argue that it’s fallen well short of that, with a string of high profile projects failing to deliver despite going way, way over budget. The agency has also had a different boss for almost every year of its existence, alarming rates of churn across staff and senior management, and an increasingly secretive and unaccountable culture, as any journalist who’s tried to speak to the DTA can attest.

Several major changes were set in train by incoming chief executive Chris Fechner – who unsurprisingly declined to join us – with the upshot being the DTA is shifting away from actually managing large-scale digital projects to operating in more of an advisory capacity.

Meanwhile, the Australian National Audit Office has commenced its audit into the DTA’s procurement practices, the highly anticipated findings of which are due in September.

In this episode of The CIO Australia Show, we’re fortunate to have three of Australia’s foremost experts on digital transformation in government: Lesley Seebeck, former chief investment and advisory officer at the DTA; Marie Johnson, chief executive at the Centre for Digital Business; and Rowan Dollar, chief information officer, Catholic Education, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn.

All three guests cite various reasons why the DTA has had its day, including arguably the biggest that you just heard at the top of the program. They also share their thoughts on how a more effective and consultative replacement might be created.

Somewhat awkwardly for her, Revenue NSW, and if we’re honest us at CIO Australia as well, the NSW Ombudsman released a report late last year concluding that that machine technologies used by Revenue NSW between 2016 and 2019 (Mackay’s tenure was largely after that period) to garnish monies owed for fines were applied unlawfully. The Ombudsman called for significant reforms in how the technologies should be used right across the public sector.

It spawned an inevitable flurry of headlines proclaiming ‘Robodebt 2.0’, and was no doubt viewed by many working in tech as an unnecessary setback on the road to governments harnessing machine technologies to deliver better quality services to people, communities and businesses, and generally improve lives. There are many examples of this happening.

But the Ombudsman report was probably also a wakeup call, reminding us all that governments face unique challenges in deploying AI and ML technologies compared with the private sector, including legal, privacy and political factors that need to be carefully balanced.

In this episode we talk with the NSW Government's chief data scientist, Dr Ian Opperman about his work as one of Australia’s – and the world’s – leading proponents of ethical AI systems, and Jeannie Marie Paterson, professor of law, co-director of the Centre for AI and digital ethics at the University of Melbourne, about the impressive potential – and significant challenges – for better utilising machine technologies across the public service.

In this episode of The CIO Show, the last for 2021, CIO Australia’s editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly, speaks to Dr Steve Hodgkinson, CIO at the Victorian Department of Health, who placed number two in the list, and Helen Clifton, chief digital officer, who placed number three this year.

A CIO5o stalwart, Steve Hodgkinson has been a champion of agile in the Australian public sector He discusses the way technology has been used to help the healthcare sector deal with the worst pandemic in 100 years. He also discusses the impact of the platform+agile approach he developed and how it is being copied by other state government departments, local government councils, and health services.

Meanwhile, the media sector has undergone rapid change in recent years; the effects of digital disruption has been widespread and brutal. The ABC’s Clifton discusses how the organisation uses digital tools in engaging audiences, particularly around the delivery of key community services.

Hodgkinson and Clifton also talk about where they see the CIO role evolving over the coming years as organisations shift to more flexible, hybrid working environments.

And as you’ll hear in this episode, to such an extent that it’s likely the role of CIO – including possibly the title itself – will shift even further away from being focussed just on technology, towards being a vastly more integrated role.

But what do CIOs need to do – and know –to be become more effective leaders? And what of those CIOs with genuine ambitions to move into CEO roles?

Cyber security is a key concern for CIOs and those executives charged with hiring them. It’s an area that requires as much of an understanding about governance and compliance as it is about technology these days.

And what about things like business management? Or other disciplines that might indicate a command of soft skills? On that expression – whether you like or not – it might actually be losing its currency as things like emotional intelligence and the ability to understand and manage people become increasingly a given.

Syed Ahmed, chief digital officer with mental health group, Innowell, has augmented his extensive tech credentials and experience with an MBA. He says it’s becoming increasingly important for tech leaders to equip themselves as true business leaders, whether they intend to take on such extended responsibilities or not.

Louise Francis, country manager and research director for IDC A/NZ notes that for those tech leaders that do have higher ambitions, it’s essential that they develop a deeper understanding of change management, amongst other things.

All of this occurred against a backdrop of slower rates of digital transformation when compared with other industries. Well, that’s certainly the perception anyway.

But as you’ll hear in this episode of The CIO Show, at least one of Australia’s leading property and construction companies was well on its ways to implementing a range of sophisticated digital projects before the pandemic, aimed at improving everything from site management, safety, commercialisation and sustainability. And COVID-19 saw those efforts greatly accelerated and refined as the contagion morphed and spread. 

In this episode, property giant Lendlease’s joint CIOs David Lipscomb and Harvey Worton talk us through their earliest conversations and initial responses to the pandemic as they contemplated its implications for the global business.

As you’ll hear, the company’s digital response was a big success, aided by the fortuitous division of responsibilities; Worton leading infrastructure and the exodus to cloud, with Lipscomb in charge of product development.

But this division has become blurred over time as various important efforts - predating COVID - to bring about company-wide digital transformation take hold.

Everything from how properties are designed before the first shovel hits to the ground to be smarter and more sustainable with regard to energy and water, to the way workers operate and communicate on the ground to be safer and more efficient, is now influenced by digital. 

Concepts that would have seemed foreign just a few years ago like ‘autonomous’ buildings, digital twins and ‘high-fidelity’ development are now part of the everyday language shared between Worton, Lipscomb and their teams as they help chart an exciting new, cleverer future for property and construction.

The real answer probably lies somewhere in between.

A 2020 report by McKinsey: How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point and transformed business forever, notes that while there have been giant digital strikes taken in the past 18 months – especially in APAC – many senior tech leaders have expressed doubts about the degree to which many of the changes will actually stick.

Worryingly, while 53% of tech leaders surveyed by McKinsey said they expected to maintain COVID-19 levels of spending on cyber security while 27% said they wouldn’t.

And there were similar proportions citing things like remote working, cloud migration and advanced analytics as areas they didn’t expect to sustain at COVID levels.

Dr Ian Oppermann, chief data scientist with the NSW Government and industry professor at the University of Technology Sydney, has led a large and successful program of digital works since before the pandemic. This has held the government in good stead as it sought to maintain and improve services, while enabling a massive exodus to working from home.

Oppermann and his team have been especially busy deploying advanced technologies including AI and ML, which has driven greater appreciation of data within the NSW government, but he admits the challenge for it – and right across the public sector – is ensuring people don’t start thinking “we’re done”. Organisations that have accelerated their digital programs throughout the pandemic now need to embed more “sustainable frameworks” to build on what they’ve achieved and continue deriving value. 

Alexey Goldov, associate partner with McKinsey’s technology practice in Australia, notes that COVID has seen many organisations place innumerable “band aids” throughout their digital environments. History shows that sometimes these stop-gap measures remain in place for years or decades, however he says CIOs should conduct a thorough assessment of everything that’s been put in place if they’re to have any chance of maintaining it.

Convincing the CIO and broader executive to maintain support for digital programs born or advanced during COVID is expected to be a significant challenge for CIOs moving forward, as companies look to cut costs, especially as the battle for talent becomes more fierce and more expensive.

To sensible minds, best practice has a very specific meaning, implying at least a collection of tasks that improve – ideally maximise – the efficiency or effectiveness of the core business and / or a process that supports it. It should also be something that’s able to be executed, as well as being replicable, transferable, and adaptable across industries.

But as you’ll hear in this episode the term best practice is losing its currency and indeed its relevance, as organisations adjust to the new realities of doing business today – with greater agility and ingenuity - and in particular given the large number of massive failures that continue to occur with alarming regularity. 

Respected industry authority and CIO Show regular, Rowan Dollar views the term as something that’s often used to claim ‘plausible deniability’ when things go awry, standing almost as a 21st century parody of the famous ad slogan ‘No one ever got fired for buying IBM’.

CIOs serious about steering their organisations through the current turbulence should push back against vendors’ fondness for the term best practice, and demand to know what it means and what they’re paying for.

Dollar says the last 20-plus years have been defined by practices that have become more synonymous with failure than success, with a worrying trend towards neglecting redundancy and resilience – often as cost-cutting measures, magnified during the GFC – now laid bare during COVID-19.

Echoing this sentiment, IDC country manager for New Zealand, Louise Francis feels blind adherence to nebulous ideas of best practice have actually slowed many organisations down, impeding agility and innovation. Yet she highlights sectors from manufacturing and retail to transport and logistics, healthcare and education that were arguably hurt most by the pandemic, as offering examples of heightened agility and resilience that may well help rewrite the playbooks of the future.

Francis also notes that tech success today is increasingly defined by key issues that weren’t priorities when the term best practice entered the mainstream decades ago, in particular ethics, climate change, sustainability and diversity.

We all know that being offline and/or being denied access to critical data and systems can have devastating consequences, even if only for a few hours, let alone days and weeks.

In this episode we speak with Jo Stewart-Rattray, veteran CIO and now CISO with home-care health specialist, Silver Chain Group, about some of her more exciting experiences working in the trenches in the face of major disasters in various industries. And she shares with us some of her most valuable lessons and advice for tech leaders operating with today’s higher tempo of existential risks.

Joining her is DR, BC and cyber expert Andrew Milroy, principal advisor with analyst firm Ecosystm, who observes that the challenge of business continuity has different contours today, not least of which because of the different technologies now underpinning organisations. For instance, as dependence on the cloud increases, there are also more cloud-based solutions designed to support better DR and BC.

But that’s not very helpful for a company that might have lost connectivity for whatever reason, and nor does it address the fact more and more malicious actors are specifically targeting recovery plans themselves.

Yet there are definite new green shoots in this country with moves afoot within the local manufacturing sector to more fully embrace technologies like AI, the ‘industrial internet of things (IoT) and of course robotics to ensure we’re able to continue actually make stuff that people want and at a sustainable price point.

In this episode we speak with Pepsi Co A/NZ CIO, Brian Green about how the company is tracking with many important digital and data-led initiatives aimed at improving market understanding, supply chains efficiencies, shop floor operations, agricultural outcomes as well as cyber security. And we also get a glimpse into how the company is deploying AR and VR to acquire deeper customer insights, as well as remote execution of highly complex engineering tasks.

Joining him is Stephanie Krishnan, research director for IDC Manufacturing Insights, and a former professor at Wollongong University, sharing her insights into the Australian - and international – manufacturing industries, which she admits have been off the pace when it comes to embracing the best digital tools, yet with definite signs – as we hear from Pepsi’s Green – of improvement.

In this episode we’ll be talking about how cloud cost management has now become a core competency for tech professionals today and what CIOs can do to avoid cloud bill shock and maximise the value of their cloud service agreements by ensuring they’re using the right services for the right tasks, as well as turning them off when they’re not using them.

CIO50 alumnus, Ian Robinson, CIO with Water NSW – one of the world’s largest utilities – shares his recent experiences of managing a vastly more complex digital environment that has seen the organisation acquire a large and growing digital footprint.

He says he’s the first to admit that cloud services can be a bit like crack cocaine, explains how he’s taking specially during dev opps cycles, and explains how he’s taking steps to develop a new and robust governance framework while trying to increase general awareness of cloud usage and costs amongst his team.

Also on the show is Gartner VP for CIO research, Chris Ganly who predicts that cost management is on track to becoming one of the most important elements informing cloud planning, procurement and management for those organisations serious about developing effective agile practices in today’s uncertain operational environment.

Yet even those that do aren’t necessarily achieving the protections they should because of entrenched cultural issues, especially in terms of how boards think about and manage risk.

Many executives remain focussed on financial risk and don’t fully appreciate the cyber variety until a major incident slaps everyone in the face, and then suddenly spending on cyber has a more obvious ROI.

Boards also tend to think that cyber should be part of a CIO’s job.

This is especially the case in smaller organisations that wouldn’t normally budget for a CSIO as well. But even when they do, how clear is it who’s responsible for what and reporting to whom?

Should CISOs operate as independent threat detectors or operate within IT?

Join our host, CIO associate editor David Binning as he speaks with Anna Leibel, former CIO with UniSuper and author of the recently published book ‘The Secure Board’, and Simon Piff, vice president trust and security research at IDC APAC.

In much the same way as these tools are being applied to study markets and consumer buying behaviours, they’re now being considered and applied in a small number of cases to better understand workers. How they’re feeling, and of course inevitably what they’re doing.

It makes sense that HR seems to be getting onboard, using technologies like AI for speeding up onboarding of new recruits to charting staff career trajectories, sifting through resumes and even trying to assess staff mental health and morale, and pre-empting staff departures.

Naturally, senior executives are interested to better understand how staff are performing and what might be done to help them be better. This inevitably means developing solutions for knowing what they’re thinking and their movements.

In this episode of The CIO Show we ask: “Where’s the line between what could be done and what should be done when it comes to deploying technology to analyse staff at work?”

We hear from Nicki Doble, group chief information officer at Cover-More; Robert Hillard, consulting leader at Deloitte Asia-Pacific; and Jim Stanford, honorary professor of political economy at the University of Sydney and director of The Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute.

Yet there are incredible changes afoot, bringing digital transformation to the critical task of not only boosting production and animal wellbeing through intelligent application of AI, robotics, IoT and blockchain, but also the critical job of increasing cyber readiness to combat biosecurity challenges as food looms as one of latest threat surfaces.

And importantly for CIOs, it seems as though we may be on the crest of a wave bringing unprecedented tech job opportunities to our beautiful regions as farmers look to digital tools to handle many of the more tedious tasks.

Just over 12 months into his role as the first CIO with Costa Group, Mark Brown relates how he’s wrangling a two-speed digital ecosystem with a view to completely transforming the relationship between food and tech at the Australian fruit and veggie giant.

Joining him is Phillip Valencia, team leader embedded intelligence and senior research engineer with the CSIRO, expanding on the massive opportunities - especially for vertically integrated agricultural firms – to streamline supply chains and affirm provenance using digital technologies.

Ben van Delden, partner, operations advisory head of AgriFood Tech & Circular Economy Advisory with KPMG reckons there’s potential to reap $20 billion worth of additional value a year to the Australian economy.

And all echo the warnings from former Deputy Leader of the NSW Nationals, country boy and now professor of agtech and horticulture with Charles Sturt University, Nial Blair that technology’s role in ensuring food security has never been more vital.

According to Jorge Silveira, the Australia-based group chief digital health officer with global healthcare firm Virtus, many organisations are not careful enough to set out the goals and terms of engagement at the outset, leaving them vulnerable to disappointment down the track. He relates the story of a global service provider which secured a large and lucrative contract with a previous employer of which he was the senior member of the tech team.

After a short period of time, key performance indicators (KPIs) started being missed, while the client become harder and harder to contact and when they did respond, it was increasingly junior and/or inexperienced staff the picked up the phone.

In effect, the MSPs original ‘dream team’ brought in to broker the sale had suddenly gone AWOL. It later transpired that in between that period and the contract signing, the MSP won a much larger contract in another Australian territory. And after that, all of the early good will, earnest promises and best intentions went out the window.

In this episode of The CIO Australia Show, we talk to three ‘accidental tech professionals’ in Australia about how came to be where they are today, how their previous professional lives and experiences helped them on their journey, and what advice they have people who may be considering similarly radical career changes.

We also hear from recruitment veteran, David Jones, who is Asia-Pacific chief at global recruiter, Robert Half. Jones talks through the findings from the recruiter’s latest surveys, which predictably, show increasing demand, and salaries, for many technology roles.

Also predictable, yet still compelling, he adds is how the buoyancy of the Australian tech sector is one of the main factors contributing to record levels of employment in the country which is leaps and bounds ahead of many economies still suffering from the pandemic.

Forbes recently described them as the “essential connective tissue that enables companies to securely and quickly exchange data and information with the outside world”, with potential to improve business results by almost 50%.

In this episode of The CIO Australia Show, we talk to CIOs and a leading analyst about the evolution of the API space, where they’re having greatest impact at the moment, and how to develop the best strategic framework for maximising their value.

Sandeep Sharma, research manager, APeJ software with IDC explains some of the drivers for double digit growth of API/integration tools across Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) as well as in Australia, which accounts for the largest share of spending on software integration via API technologies.

Angela Donohoe, CIO at BPay reveals how the payments group adopted a strong focus on innovation and took a leading role in exposing APIs to its more than 60,000 billers and more than 170 banks and financial institutions.

“We had to get much better at customer experience and user generated design,” she says.

Interestingly, Donhoe also notes that the major impetus for BPay to invest more energy and money in its API ecosystem was demand from the market.

“Good design is ageless,” says ANZ Bank’s tech lead for responsible banking, Leigh Gibson, adding that one of her biggest challenges is maintaining a focus on simplicity in the face of so much complexity being built up “at scale over time”.

But this serious virus has reared its head again with quarantine leaks resulting in new outbreaks and a fresh round of mini government-mandated lockdowns in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

Now, a year-and-a-half into the global pandemic, just over 4 per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, which lags behind other western nations by significant margins.

But Richard Taggart, chief information officer at Sydney Local Health District and his team are doing their utmost to drive those numbers higher, deploying scalable technologies that are now enabling more than 7,000 Australians each day to get their jabs at a mass vaccination centre at Sydney’s Olympic Park.

But many universities have stepped up to the challenge, deploying video conferencing, mobile and cloud-based solutions, as well as more sophisticated AI and other data analysis tools in quick time to keep students engaged and connected with their institutions and instructors.

IDC A/NZ research director, Louise Francis expands on some of the more startling predictions from the research group’s global and A/NZ focussed research into digital trends within education, including that by 2024, 40 percent of education will be delivered by personalised and adaptive AI systems. And 3D printing is already having a big impact across multiple disciplines.

It’s also predicted that 5G will be a powerful agent for change in the education sector, enabling far greater collaboration and engagement, while helping to shrink the digital divide.

Another IDC prediction is that students should also expect emerging digital technologies to play a greater role in supporting and managing exams – or proctoring – heralding a rather bleak future for those inclined to cheat, as well as making things like plagiarism a lot harder. 

Fiona Rankin, CIO with Wollongong University talks through her experiences leading an organisation-wide digital transformation project starting in late 2018 and how she’s helped manage a raft of change management challenges, almost all of which have been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.

Australian Catholic University CIO Niranjan Prabhu shares how he and his teams have applied digital technologies across the entire organisation, helping to improve things like student and teacher sentiment analysis using AI and ML, and also improving operations across the university. 

Of course, the fact ransomware and other cyber attacks against tertiary institutions have surged during COVID is a major cause for concern and a harsh reality CIOs and CSIOs within the sector need to address from the core and all the way to the fast expanding perimeter.  

The CIO50 2020 was arguably the most significant recognition of how tech leaders in Australia and New Zealand helped their organisations deal with COVID-19. And as we've heard, it also resulted in five - or even 10 - years' worth of digital projects being brought forward.

In this episode listen to CIO Australia editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly and CIO New Zealand editor, Sarah Putt reflect on the key moments from last year’s awards, which of course featured a lot of entries describing how CIOs – and their teams – harnessed the best digital tools to help their organisations survive the pandemic.

We reflect on the top three CIOs working on each side of thew ditch in 2020, and what made them stand put the most in such competitive fields.

As you’ll hear, both Connolly and Putt expect this year’s nominees to be largely judged according to their ability to ensure the crisis didn’t go to waste. With five or even 10 years’ worth of digital projects being brought forward across the board, this has surely been a massive opportunity for CIOs to shine.

Enabling and supporting work from home and the so-called new normal certainly defined 2020 for most CIOs, but with so much trust – and power – vested in them by the c-suite and senior management, the past six or so months have been an opportunity to chart ambitious new digital roadmaps extending well into the future.

Last year’s awards reflected a profession changing in important ways, with a woman claiming top spot in New Zealand, and a record three women named in the top 10 in Australia. There were also encouraging signs of greater ethnic diversity, which we look forward to seeing replicated, or even bettered for 2021.

And as Connolly and Putt both emphasise, the CIO50 is as much about the recognition of great technology teams, as it is about individual achievements, so we encourage anyone working in tech across Australia and New Zealand to share their stories of digital innovation, influence and leadership with us.

Finally, nominations for the 2021 CIO50 'Community Awards' are also open on Wednesday, providing a great opportunity to recognise the great work organisations - public and private - are doing in harnessing the best digital solutions for real social change.

From anticipating consumer buying decisions, to predicting political outcomes, speeding discovery and treatment for disease, who we should date and marry, deciding who gets a job, or a home loan, AI is on fast track to touch virtually every aspect of work, life and play.

The possibilities for augmenting human capabilities and endeavour are indeed very exciting, while the potential for harm is also now an important topic of conversation.

In this episode of The CIO Show we have a panel with three of Australia’s greatest AI experts discussing the need for serious regulatory and cultural reform to ensure the technology reaches it potential within acceptable ethical bounds.

Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Ed Santow highlights some of the key findings – and recommendations – from its world-first ‘Human Rights and Technology Report’ including the need for Australia to have a new independent office for an ‘AI Safety Commissioner’, to help establish and enforce the guardrails.

Three years in the making, the report also looks at the use of biometric technologies like facial recognition, calling for a moratorium on their use until proper safeguards can be put in place.

There are many examples of how AI systems have led to bias, discrimination and worse, with the memory of Australia’s ‘Robodebt’ debacle still raw for many.

And as Marie Johnson, managing director and chief digital officer with the Centre for Digital Business reveals on the show, there is at least on one major federal government agency about to suffer a similar fate thanks to an AI system she says will do more harm than good. 

Someone both at the coal faces and in the trenches when it comes to managing AI and ethics within a large organisational structure, NSW Government chief digital officer, Dr Ian Oppermann has presided over creation of an AI Ethics Committee for the state, with Ed Santow as a current member. 

Someone who has thought long and hard about what widespread deployment of AI means for us, Opperman boils it down nicely as the evolving art of balancing ‘principles and bits.’  

It’s a big step, especially given not so long ago there was a lively debate about the wisdom of having anything but the least sensitive, least critical data stored in a public virtual environment.

As we heard in a previous episode of ‘The CIO Show’, experts feel that few organisations really need to keep anything on premise these days, except in certain cases where there’s a regulatory and/or compliance reason for doing so. 

But the other school of thought says the cloud shouldn’t be thought of as a panacea to reduce costs and complexity, and that there are many serious questions CIOs and organisations need to answer lest they join the growing club of those feeling buyers’ remorse after going all-in.

Come up close to 10 years as chief information officer at carsales.com.au, Jason Blackman shares with us his journey steering the company from ‘cloud-first’ to ‘cloud-only’, explaining that being born as a digitally native company definitely made the transition easier. But he stresses that any CIO contemplating such a move needs to ensure they’re not simply doing a ‘shit and lift.'

Also on the show are Simon Kaye, Chris Fleischmann and Andre Conti from IT services consultancy NCS. They have almost 100 years’ experience between them deploying and managing enterprise data systems – including cloud – for companies including AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Accenture, Oracle, CSC and Semaphore.

All three paint a more blurred, nuanced picture of the cloud space, warning organisations against rushing everything to the cloud without a proper audit of inhouse skills and an honest cost-benefit analysis. 

Cloud computing is now entering a new phase of maturity with more complex and nuanced service offerings for CIOs to navigate, they say. This means that CIOs need to think more seriously about the benefits of going all in with the cloud, and ask serious questions like: "How much money is invested in on-premise hardware and systems, and will workloads run as effectively in the cloud?" 

One key consideration moving forward is what sort of technical debt is likely to accrue over time – as well as the costs of repatriation – as hyperscalers look to nail down their incumbency.

But as Neha Kumar, senior analyst with Gartner cautions “women are over mentored and under sponsored” in the tech industry, calling for more practical and meaningful steps to increase female participation.

She shares her experiences as a computer engineering student in India, recalling that many of her classes had more women than men, a fact she attributes largely to a greater awareness amongst her and her fellow female students of the huge need to for tech skills across multiple industries.

Kumar also discusses the potential to apply technologies like AI to help tech leaders - and all hiring managers - to eliminate bias; a major change from the bad old days when companies like Amazon and Google were found to unwittingly using the same technology to perpetuate it.

Jennifer Robeiro, chief information officer at Victorian utility, City West Water, reveals that just 10 percent – and often less – of the applications she’s seeing for the many tech roles she’s trying to fill are from women, while it’s becoming increasingly common that no women apply at all.

But why is this happening, especially given women make up around 20 percent of tech professionals in Australia?

Part of the reason certainly lies in what many see as innate gender differences, including the fact men tend to overstate their abilities with women more likely to do the opposite.

Joining Neha and Jennifer on this panel is fellow CIO50 2020 alumnus, Nicki Doble, global chief information officer and chief security information officer at multinational insurance firm Covermore, who agrees strongly with Kumar that mentoring is being overdone at the cost of real sponsorship. She stresses that there are a lot more technically capable women in the market than many believe.

But she emphasises that attracting and retaining them in tech roles requires creating the right structures and mentoring in genuine ways that truly resonate.

Roisin Parkes, who was made redundant in February as CTO at Gumtree says when she joined the organisation just over four years ago, she underestimated how difficult and different decision-making would be when part of a leadership team that doesn't necessarily have a technology background.

Jeremy Francis last month left the CIO role at Pepper Financial Services for his first chief operating officer role at Genworth Financial Services.

He says when Genworth first called him about the job, he felt he wasn't the right fit with his technology experience. He says the financial services sector is seeing a shift where senior technology executives are being asked to step into these operational roles.

Ursula Phillips just left her job as group chief information officer at Real Pet Food Company. She discusses her success in getting 30 major technology implementations over the line and building a new tech team at the organisation.

Phillips says she learned some key lessons around taking stakeholders on the transformation journey and making sure that whilst projects often have a technology component, they usually succeeded or fail on business adoption and processes. A real learning, she says, is making sure as a tech leader, you have business engagement up front and that his buy-in stays all the way through a project.

Finally, Andy Luiskandl spent the second half of 2020 as as head of information technology at healthcare provider, Healius. He describes his role as a ''journey through no man's land.' 

After becoming the agency’s first ever CIO just over three years ago, Dunsford and his team have transformed what was essentially a paper-based organisation, utterly bogged in endless inefficient manual processes, hardly any communication between IT and police officers and senior management, and no cloud services, to be the envy of every police force in the world.

It’s no wonder then he placed third in the 2020 CIO50.

Tech is now an integral part of policing in Australia’s largest and most populous state, with Dunsford and his team now viewed as an integral resource for the force, frequently brought in to work directly on investigations.

For instance, Dunsford discusses how AI and ML are being deployed to impressive effect, including enabling police to create identities and control voice bots designed to fool paedophiles into thinking they’re interacting with potential victims.

And he explains how these same technologies are being used to automate the task of wading through mindboggling volumes of CCTV, body worn video (BWV), and other footage, such as occurred with the tracking, arrest and investigation of psychiatric hospital escapee – terrorist imposter – Mert Ney in 2019.

When Dunsford started, the force hadn’t event started its journey to the cloud, and last year became one of the last organisations in the world to finally close Lotus Notes, while striving to phase out ‘sticky notes.'

Now it boasts one of the most efficient registers for tracking, storing and retrieving everything from firearms to DNA.

Today, NSW police are significantly better organised, more effective and safer in the field, thanks to a range of digital projects successfully deployed over the past few years, including creating the patrol cars of the future.

Unsurprisingly, Dunsford and his team are now increasingly being asked to host delegations of senior law enforcement officials from around the world eager to emulate their success.

In the past, the IT group has been viewed as a cost centre that is prone to overspending on tech projects and worse, asking for money for equipment and services that may not end up delivering any value to the business at all.

That’s a bad situation for everyone involved.

But in recent times, things have changed. In 2021, technology is more pervasive across organisations that it has even been, and the opinions and ideas of senior tech execs are certainly shared at board level and form a vital part of any organisation's growth objectives.

In this week's CIO Show, execs from a few sides of the C-suite fence share their thoughts on how their relationships have changed.

Rowan Dollar, chief innovation officer at The Public Sector Network, says a big learning for IT in recent years and since the COVID pandemic hit last year, is that the business doesn't care which platform is used to deliver solutions, it just wants an outcome.

James Lockyer, director, finance at Arts Centre Melbourne, says there has been a shift in the construct and dynamics of leadership teams. The individual specialisations of each member of the C-suite are not sufficient to meet the needs of impatient customers, he says.

Sweta Mehra, chief marketing officer at ANZ Bank has has had an unusual career trajectory, She started coding a young girl at school, earning an engineering degree before heading back to college to study marketing. Mehra is adamant that you can't be a great marketer without understanding technology.

Her 13-week old puppy dog also took the time to voice her own opinions but we are not quite sure if she agrees of not.

Finally, Bobby Lehane, the former chief executive officer at CHU Underwriting Agencies, was also a senior tech leader at Multiplex Grou and Zurich, says the ability for organisations to win, change and transform is absolutely dependent on the CEO/CIO relationship. If there is no partnership between the two, the CEO will risk manage and make every decision based on what they know about technology, which is often very little.

Tech professionals working at the coalface last year would have acquired several years, even more, of valuable experience spanning major crisis – and stress – management, while being part of a step-change in how organisations view and interact with IT.

Alastair Sharman, chief digital officer at health giant, Mater Health, describes how he’s rewriting the CIO recruitment playbook as the organisation looks to cram some 10 years’ worth of digital transformation into three. A big part of this is knowing your team, individual strengths and understanding how to help people to be the best they can be.

Neha Kumar, director at Gartner’s CIO research and advisory group, says the lifecycle for tech skills has never been shorter than it is today, and stresses the importance of developing a proper workforce strategy that takes into account core competencies beyond mere technical skills.

Bridget Gray, APAC VP with global consultancy firm, Korn Ferry, says businesses can have all the great tech in the world, but projects won’t be successful without the right people, and stresses the importance of having a recruitment strategy and approach that assesses people’s propensity for creativity and innovation. 

And David Jones, MD Asia Pacific with recruitment firm Robert Half discusses highlights from its 2021 Salary Guide, including the fact; 73% of Australian CIOs plan to extend salary increases to their tech employees this year; 69% say they are willing to increase their initial salary offering to secure tech talent; and that 82% of CIOs are concerned about losing their top IT talent with 53% believing it will be more challenging to find qualified tech employees compared to before the pandemic. 

In fact, it’s expected that the edge will spawn completely new thinking and actual applications around business communications over the next few years.

And in Australia it’s poised to be a game-changer for all organisations, especially those operating in rural and regional locations, which are on the wrong side of what has become a gaping digital divide in this country.

Providing further perspective, CIO50 2020 alumnus, Water NSW's chief information officer, Ian Robinson, discusses how important having an effective edge computing architecture will be for the organisation moving forward, outlining some powerful use cases, in particular around the capturing and analysing of high-definition video footage from sites. He also gives a sneak peak at current Water NSW projects bring together the edge and IoT applications in compelling ways.

Hugh Ujhazy, IDC’s vice president, telecommunications and IoT for APEJ, explains that the whole concept of networking has been turned on its head in recent years with the explosion of devices at the edge driving a future with less emphasis on the ‘consumption’ of data and more about its ‘creation’.  

And Chris Thorpe, founder and chief executive officer at Leading Edge Data Centres, shares his vision for closing the gap between metro and regional Australia through the progressive rollout of data centres.

He says they're already enabling CIOs to capitalise on cloud and other technologies which were previously inaccessible or lacked adequate performance to be effective, with agriculture, healthcare, education and government organisations among those standing to gain the most.

Print publishing is a shadow of its former self, while the transition to online news has been fraught by challenges developing a workable payment model, and more recently in bringing big tech to the bargaining table. Broadcast has been through a tough time too, but in fairly short time has made real progress in moving away from the old linear models of content delivery.

The upshot is that media companies still operating do so largely because of their ability to harness new digital technologies to develop a deeper understanding of their readers and create better, more targeted products that are more appealing to advertisers. 

Southern Cross Austereo's chief technology officer and CIO50 2020 alumnus, Stephen Haddad, shares part of his compelling journey as a tech leader during the most disruptive period ever experienced by the Australian media, and outlines how he and his team are using technologies like AI to create content better aligned with what people want and how that’s translating into a smarter, more measurable revenue model.

Industry veteran and legend, Alan Sweeney discusses the extraordinary ride media has been on since the progressive migration for analogue to digital almost 10 years ago, and how CIOs and tech leaders are now front and centre in shaping its future.

Accenture’s A/NZ managing director communications media and technology, Jonathan Restarick agrees, noting also that the lower barriers to entry for leading-edge digital solutions will likely be a boon for smaller media companies, empowering them to create – and monetise - more local content for their audiences and communities.

And John Lock, enterprise architect with more than 25 years’ experience at the ABC, SBS and Seven alone presents his vision for where the media sector is heading, from AI-driven camera systems taught how to follow and cover specific sports, audience interaction with digital objects inserted into TV programs for advertising, new systems for voting people ‘off-the-island’ and the role of technologies like AR and VR in broadcasting.

Nicki Doble, group chief information officer at travel insurance and medical assistance provider, Cover-More Group, discusses her role in 'fixing broken stuff' at organisations and why people walk away from these technology messes. She talks about a launch that fell flat in a big way, and what it is about the culture of IT that restricts people from talking about their failures.

Australian tech veteran, Peter Nevin, tells a compelling story about how he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of success. Finally, Vinnie D'Alessandro, chief technology officer at Change Financial Limited discusses why he is always mindful of 'underestimating inertia' when it comes to people and technology.

But if you’ve spent anytime using platforms like Slack, Monday, Ascender and of course the various collaboration options from Australia’s own Atlassian, you’d have to agree that doesn’t seem so ‘killer’ now.

Jennifer Rebeiro, CIO with Melbourne’s City West Water utility, says email’s role has been slightly diminished by the growing number and capability of more collaborative options, but stresses that it will remain a key tool, especially in the public sector where there remains a strong emphasis on collecting and documenting records.

Gavin Tay, Gartner VP analyst and fellow equates email’s stubborn presence in the enterprise with zombies and the undead; you might try to kill it but it just keeps “popping back up again”. He cites the experiences of French IT firm, Atos Origin, and its partially successful – or failed – crusade, depending on how you look at it.

Tay also explains that Microsoft and Google are both advancing AI/automation capabilities that will likely make email a more effective business tool, and certainly less intrusive than it has been in the past, with CIOs presented with new opportunities achieve significant productivity gains.

And Tim Sheedy, principal analyst with Ecosystm in Australia notes that CIOs need to shift the conversation about whether email is more hindrance than help should be widened to consider how to reduce the degree to which staff are “interrupted”. Collaboration tools, while all the rage now, can be just as annoying, especially if they’re triggering emails pining us to open them.

Sheedy continues on from Tay highlighting the growing array of AI tools enabling greater levels of automation which we’ll all likely find perfectly natural in the future.

Now, and especially after the experiences of last year, culture is a serious concern for CIOs looking to build the right teams capable of working together to best solve the biggest challenges facing their organisations, and averting project failures.

But how do they actually achieve this? What things needs to be considered in creating small or entire teams, from screening to hiring, mentoring and even firing?

Johnny Serrano, chief information officer with global mining software and digital solutions company, Ground Probe, explains how making culture a key pillar of his innovation framework is encouraging greater inclusivity, engagement and ultimately real results in the form of faster and smarter problem solving.

In many ways it was his way of tapping into the diverse voices and perspectives within Ground Probe’s global tech team, and capitalising on the closer working relationship that had to develop in response to COVID-19.

Nicole Gorton, APAC director for recruitment consultants, Robert Half, cites recent and compelling findings that more culturally-balanced teams in terms of diversity and inclusion report significantly higher levels of engagement, retention and actual innovation.

Among the key red flags she sees is a still pervasive tendency of CIOs – in fact many managers – to hire people that look and walk like them, while often getting too preoccupied with technical capabilities at the risk of discounting important ‘soft skills.’

And Rowan Dollar, recently named head of innovation with the Public Sector Network, shares his perspectives on how culture can make or break teams, and how it’s typically the main contributor to catastrophic project failures.

On this, he notes customers and vendors should take steps towards ensuring their respective cultures and people are aligned at the startling line, lest the first time their CEOs meet is in court.

However, the fundamental driver for improving organisational culture, Dollar says, should always be ensuring everyone is able to properly execute the job of creating better customer experiences.

It’s hard enough for organisations that have great culture, let alone those that aren’t even thinking about theirs.

Many Australian NFPs needed to dig deep, discovering strength they may not have imagined they possessed previously, and honing their greatest instincts for creativity and innovation. 

In this week's episode of The CIO Show, we speak UNICEF's CIO, Abhishek Singh; the Australian Red Cross’ new tech chief, Brett Wilson; and Cancer Council NSW's CIO, Frances Waterford about what attracts them to the not-for-profit sector. 

They also discuss the challenges of deploying technology when people and financial resources can be limited; and the role digital solutions will play this year and the years following to help people in need.

No doubt captivated by this long-held dream, analysts report many more organisations moved to embrace open source last year in response to the sudden explosion of unique digital problems which they hoped to solve using broader communities of developers, ideally for less cost.

But just like the conversation as to whether the cloud is actually cheaper than on premise, the question is equally if not more complex and nuanced in the open source space.

As Mark O’Neill, Gartner VP analyst covering in open source within the software engineering space notes, it’s easy to think of open source as cheaper “if you don’t value time”. He has some cunning advice for how CIOs can help keep vendors on their toes by introducing open source into their conversations, as well as on how to navigate the altogether different and evolving licensing landscape.

Founder of Melbourne-based Cyber IT Solutions and long-standing open source strategist, Con Zymaris, says while cost is a critical consideration, making an intelligent assessment of open source investments demands a broader view that takes account for instance, of the technology as a means of risk mitigation and digital ‘hedging.”

Just ponder a hypothetical scenario where a major cloud provider chucks a ‘Zuckerberg’ and restricts access to its platform? An organisation with an organised open source environment and skilled team would weather the storm better than others.

And Sae Ra, president of Linux Australia explains how open source is becoming standard across government agencies, while giving us some insight into her work with an NFP trying to address the lack of file standards across the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector, and the critical importance of proper ‘digital preservation’ for all organisations.

She also has an interesting take on what the Federal Government’s ‘Assistance and Access Act’ means for open source developers.

But as the SaaS pricing and deployment model continues its inexorable spread into every level and corner of today’s evolving technology stack, the question is now being asked whether ‘monolithic ERP’ is now dead.

According to our expert guests in this episode, if it isn’t yet, it’s certainly moving into palliative care.

As Accenture’s respective Australi anad New Zealand leads for SAP and Oracle, Bruce McKinnon and Doug Hughes explain, the entire business of ERP has been flipped on its head compared with the bad-old days when complex, costly and exhaustively long deployments were simply an accepted part of life.

Hughes notes while the transition has been ongoing for several years, COVID greatly accelerated it, with the retail sector in particular quickly pivoting to new SaaS-based systems offering the greater speed and flexibility needed to survive.

In retail and other sectors where data is king, ERP is now being driven by CX, as is increasingly the case across the broader business technology stack.

In stark contrast to traditional ERP arrangements, the “barriers for entry and exit” have now been effectively removed, according to McKinnon. Emerging SaaS-based challengers have made sure of that, and the big ERP giants have been forced to adapt their offerings in response.

Both are now increasingly marketing directly to line-of-business managers (think finance, HR, marketing) presenting CIOs with a different, potentially more vexing ‘shadow IT’ challenge.

But the opportunity for CIOs now is to embrace more ‘agile’ methodologies (see last week’s episode: Agile in Australia: Are you fast or fake?) and abandon the traditional ‘waterfall’ approaches which both Hughes and McKinnon blame for many organisations’ pre-occupation with customising core ERP modules. They contend that while the cloud makes customisation harder, that’s actually a good thing when it comes to ERP.

Will Sessions, head of technology innovation with the National Maritime Museum in Sydney feels that CRM is cutting ERP’s grass, increasingly incorporating its traditional capabilities at the same time as CIOs are becoming less inclined to make big investments in the latter.

Describing what he and his team have been able to achieve working with a number of different CRN providers – including one targeting the performing arts – he stresses that it’s irrelevant in his view, whether an organisation has invested in and deployed something that has ‘ERP’ on the tin if it hasn’t got a robust platform and processes for collecting, analysing and reporting on critical data in real-time.

In this episode, we speak to self-confessed Agile purist, Paul Keen, who is vice president of engineering at software firm Nuix.

Keen discusses the problems that Agile methodologies solve, why they are not necessarily a panacea for the ills of traditional software development, and what he has learnt in relation to planning, selecting the right teams, doing testing correctly, and taking on customer feedback.

David Bolton, who is chief technology officer at Domain, talks about how Agile methodologies are used across the digital property portal and real estate business; and the ‘grey areas’ in consulting that take Agile across discovery-driven product development right through to large scale, predictable project delivery.

And finally, Stu Mitchell and Sam Bowtell, Scrum trainers and coaches at RedAgile, talk about the differences between fake and real Agile, the key traits of a good Agile practitioner, and what organisations that are succeeding with these methodologies are doing better than those that are not.

Chris Bell, a veteran banking tech leader, now regional VP executive programs with Gartner, shares his experiences and perspectives on how banks are dealing with the pressure to move away from their legacy systems to more integrated, data driven systems capable of supporting current demands for true customer centricity.

He also ponders the extent to which banks are being spooked into action by the sudden rise of competing fintechs, whether there’s a trend emerging amongst banks hiring ‘data managers’ from big tech, and what that might mean for CIOs.

Andrew Walker, a banking sector veteran who is now CEO at fintech Nano Home Loans, explains how his experiences in senior technology and business roles with Westpac and others inspired him to launch his own startup.

Walker pulls no punches in assessing the true state of digital transformation amongst banks and other established finance firms, while providing a fascinating insight into how he and his team actually built their fintech.

And one of our favourite tech industry scholars, Deloitte Asia Pacific's chief transformation officer , Rob Hillard, returns to talk about how the pressure now on banks to become more like technology companies.

He says that this has created something of an identity crisis for banks, something that they'll experience for some time yet as they contineu wrestling with legacy systems and the threat of more agile fintechs looking for a piece of the action.

Has it become something of a euphemism for ‘digital laggard’, given so many organisations, including many of the biggest and with arguably the most to lose from losing control and or losing face, have resolved to go 100 per cent public cloud?

Elizabeth Wilson, CIO at the Victorian Department of Education and Training, and former tech chief at Edith Cowan University, is quite sceptical of any established organisation retaining data and applications on-premise, given how advanced the top cloud providers are today.

Wilson and her team are close to finishing a platform that will harvest data on children from across all Victorian government agencies. They are confident about running fully in the cloud despite the highly sensitive nature of this type of information.

Andrew Lawrence, founder of cyber consultancy, Secureroo, and former CIO of challenger telco Superloop, is also surprised at organisations that still have hybrid environments today, although he explained there are still many valid reasons for doing do, from regulatory requirements, to latency and a desire for control.

However, he predicts that the move towards edge computing and 5G will drive construction of larger numbers of smaller data centres across Australia. This will bring the cloud closer, especially to companies operating outside of major cities, potentially obviating the need for hybrid cloud in the future for many.

And David Kissane, managing director, APAC lead for enterprise cloud at tech business consultancy, Protiviti, feels the debate about hybrid cloud simply reflects the reality of today’s cloud marketplace, in that it’s just not as simple and straight forward as many think or hope that it should be.

Rob Hillard, Deloitte Asia Pacific chief transformation officer expects to see more examples of consumer tech infiltrating the enterprise, in the form of more user-friendly UIs and simpler cloud platforms and applications, along with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the cloud’s potential to help unify and synchronise supply chains in massive industries like automotive.

In fact, Hillard believes one of the reason’s predictions Tesla would fail last year was arguably the biggest ‘dud’, was the company’s ability to fully harness the cloud for vastly greater efficiencies and scale.

Kudzai Kanhutu, deputy chief medical information officer and infectious diseases doctor with The Royal Melbourne Hospital thinks 2021 will be defined by deeper thought and consideration of digital projects, as organisations – especially in healthcare – recover from the madness and trauma of 2020. She hopes the experience might inspire better strategies for improving performance and uptake of the beleaguered My Health Record but isn’t holding her breath.  

Tim Sheedy, principal advisor with analyst firm Ecosystm predicts vendors will talk less about ‘AI’, as the feeling grows that if it’s not already built into your stack you shouldn’t be talking at all. And he predicts this year we’ll see not only growing acceptance and deployment of hybrid-cloud models, but also better tools to manage them. Likewise, for multi-cloud.

It’s a fast-growing area, accelerated by COVID-19 as CIOs have sought ways to maintain and increase agility as organisations looked to mobilise entire workforces and pivot their operations in ways never seen before. 

We talk to senior technology leaders at two of Australia’s leading universities about their experiences deploying automation; what problems were they trying to solve, how successful were they, and what insights have emerged to inform future work. 

Will Calvert, director of technology and enablement for RMIT Online talks about how he and his team dealt with an almost 30 per cent rise in online course enrolments this year, and the increased role being played by ‘learning analytics’ in better understanding student wellbeing, and course and career objectives.   

Shiv Chandra, process automation team lead with the University of Melbourne talks us through the past three years since the organisation embarked on its automation journey, and how it’s using the technology the serve up ‘proactive offers’ to students, often before they themselves receive their results.   

And Ghislaine Entwisle, managing director of tech consulting at global consultancy firm, Protiviti shares her expert insights garnered from years working at the coalface of automation across multiple industries, giving something of a deep dive into a current project with one of Australia’s biggest children’s hospitals. 

However, while digital technologies have huge potential to further transform the public service, its size and sprawling bureaucracies create unique challenges for the deployment of large-scale, complex systems. 

Public-sector tech veteran and former CIO with South Australian and Northern Territory governments, Rowan Dollar, says there’s still a long way to go before genuine ‘transformation’ occurs, largely blaming rigid and outdated funding models for stifling innovation and agile practises.  

By contrast, our first state government chief data scientist, Dr Ian Opperman outlines the work he has led over the past five years developing a sophisticated data analytics capability for NSW, in parallel with creating a robust governance framework – including ‘ethical’ AI - that takes account of the unique and evolving risks facing governments today. 

Gartner’s Dean Lacheca reflects on his 10 years as chief digital officer with Workcover Queensland, admitting his experience of driving digital transformation with strong executive support and the right culture was one of few exceptions that prove the rule for most tech leaders working in government today. 

And Jason Hutchinson, Deloitte’s government digital transformation lead stresses that in order for digital technologies to reach their true potential in government, agencies need to do more than just get their own houses in order and foster strong digital relationships across agencies, levels of government and even with the private sector.  

RMIT associate professor, Nicolas Menicucci, explains for us how quantum computing actually works – and how it doesn’t – its different iterations including laser/optical, where the technology is today, the recent advances and key hurdles, as well as what the technology might mean for all of us, especially in businesses and the enterprise.  

And Dr Ben Brown, quantum computing researcher at The University of Sydney, explains the importance of his and others’ work in addressing ‘decoherence’, which describes the high levels of noise or errors in quantum systems. These can occur as a result of entanglement, which is when different quantum elements come together in ways that weren’t predicted (seems little is in this area) and produce unexpected results.

It’s a critically important area of quantum computing, the success of which will largely determine whether the technology will live up to expectations. 

We begin talking to Hannah Sakai, director of analytics strategy innovation division with IAG, Australia’s largest general insurer, about a powerful NLP solution her and the team developed inhouse to speed up processing of ‘total-loss’, or ‘write-off’ motor vehicle claims.

Sakai explains in detail how they applied NLP to bring this down from three weeks to three days, and how the solution is now primed to be rolled out across IAG more broadly.

Dr Rhoda Abadia, program director for the University of South Australia’s online bachelor of IT and data analytics takes us on a deep-dive into an exciting NLP trial aimed at better understanding how online students are coping with their studies – and life in general – by analysing words from chat forums and emails.

As with IAG’s project, Uni SA is poised to roll-out NLP across the entire university, driven partly by the fact regular students are now having to adapt to virtual learning situations.

And we welcome back to the show Sharon Hakkenes, senior director analyst at Gartner and former healthcare CIO, who explains the incredible NLP applications being conceived and deployed for improving how hospitals and healthcare professionals operate, leading ultimately to greatly improved health outcomes, and even saving lives.

Now in it's 5th year, the CIO50 celebrates senior executives who are driving technological innovation and leading teams at organisations in the public and private sectors across Australia.

We speak to Ramsay Health Care's chief information officer, John Sutherland, who took the top spot; Angela Coble, director, business technology at Johnson & Johnson Medical who slotted in at number two; and Gordon Dunsford, chief information and technology officer at NSW Police, who placed third in the list this year.

Ramsay Health Care's Sutherland discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way clinicians think aout the role of technology in their working lives, how the organisation has deployed virtual healthcare services this year, and its working with technology startups.

Johnson & Johnson Medical's Coble taks about how she capitalised on her relationships with colleagues in China to learn from their COVID-19 response, and the applications that helped staff connect with surgeons and report on staff movements during the crisis.

Finally, NSW Police's Dunsford chats to us about how police engaged with technology to solve a murder case in Sydney last year, how tools provided by his team were used by the elite State Crime Squad investigating arson during last summer's devastating bushfires, and when Australians were held in hotel quarantine as COVID-19 hit earlier this year.

Apart from its role in supporting cryptocurrency, and the odd out-there fad like CryptoKitties, the technology failed to emerge as a game changer for the enterprise.

In this episode of The CIO Show, Laszlo Peter, head of blockchain services at KPMG Asia Pacific, explains how blockchain systems and ideas might be applied to the upcoming, highly complex challenge of distributing the COVID-19 vaccine in Australia. It’s already being applied in cancer research and oncology, while emerging as a potential game changer for Australia’s agriculture industries.  

According to Kaspar Kaarlep, co-founder and CTO of blockchain driven renewable energy exchange, WePower Networks that’s because blockchain doesn’t really belong.

In fact, it isn’t necessarily needed as part of most organisations’ existing IT architectures. Its real value is in facilitating networks, systems of trust between organisations and throughout entire industries, such as the energy sector.

And our third guest Jonathan Kempe, co-founder and CEO of supply chain security startup Verefai, calls out what he sees as a fraudulent misuse of the term ‘blockchain’ to sell organisations solutions that are often more expensive than available alternatives which would likely do a better job, while being simpler and easier to maintain.

For years, the industry had the dubious distinction of being among the least technically savvy, but that has changed dramatically as improvements in computing and communications have brought us closer to a world where our health records and history become completely digital.

Alastair Sharman, chief digital officer at Queensland's Mater Health, discussed the core pillars he has established to drive and guide digital projects while managing some very large moving parts.

Alan Pritchard, director of EMR and ICT services at Victorian healthcare group Austin Health, responds to the somewhat rhetorical question as to whether IT leaders in health have the same ‘freedom to fail’ as their peers in other industries. Yes, as with most questions in health, the answer is rather nuanced.

Both men describe how their respective healthcare organisation are embracing technologies and platforms such as CRMs normally associated with marketing and sales as part of their efforts to improve digital systems for better patient care.

And Sharon Hakkennes, senior director analyst with Gartner, and herself a former CIO in the healthcare space, explains why many organisations in the sector – be they public or private – have a tough road ahead in successfully bringing together all the elements to realise the vision of fully integrated digital care.

You need only look at the slow progress of the much-vaunted My Health Record to understand the scale of the challenge and how fraught it can be.

But over the past few years we’ve seen a handful of local companies defy expectations and ascend to the global stage, while of course we’ve seen the creation of a dedicated tech index on the Australian Stock Exchange.

So what’s the real state of the local tech industry today, where’s it heading and what needs to be done to get there faster?

Long-standing Australian tech analyst, consultant and author Len Rust, thinks that while there’s lots of room for improvement, the local industry has nevertheless produced plenty of great companies – and people – to be proud of, in addition to the obvious ones that seem to grab all the headlines.

Cheryl George, commercial director with the CSIRO’s Data61, takes us on a fascinating tour of what the agency is currently up to across many areas of technology, in particular advancing innovations with implications for the enterprise, as well as programs supporting the procurement of local tech by local businesses.

And Ecosystm principal analyst Tim Sheedy shares his vision for how Australian organisations can harness the best of local innovation to drive better business practises and insights by simply picking up the phone – or walking across the road – any connecting with any number of world-class universities and research institutes.

Now with the increased complexity of hybrid cloud environments, greatly accelerated of course by COVID-19, CSIOs and CIOs with responsibility for cyber are having to rethink how they go about creating effective frameworks to ensure protection in an increasingly virtual world, with more data, systems and people operating at the edge and outside of the company firewall. 

We talk to Chris Neal, the CSIO at Australian healthcare giant Ramsay Healthcare, about his experiences and perspectives managing cyber in arguably the most vulnerable sector of all at the moment. 

James Turner, managing director for CSIO Lens, the peak body for cyber security professionals in Australia and New Zealand explains the importance of ‘asset’ management, as well as thinking about operations, while stressing that many cloud services have strong security capabilities, if only customers would turn them on.  

And David Hawks, partner in cyber risk at Deloitte zeros in what he sees as being arguably the biggest issue with regard to cyber in the cloud: technical debt. Many organisations make the mistake of simply “shifting and lifting” workloads from the old world to the new without making the necessary adjustments to properly protect themselves, and without ensuring appropriate levels of collaboration across the organisation and with partners across the supply chain.

Ian Robinson, chief information officer at Water NSW, shares with us his experiences replacing, in some cases, 100-year old equipment, practises and thinking to transform management of Australia’s biggest, most complex and politically-charged water network, from the quality of the sip we take from the tap, to supporting farmers, primary industry and indigenous stakeholders. 

We also talk to Ben Waterhouse, chief information officer at Australia’s biggest equipment hire company, about how IoT is being deployed to transform the customer experience, as well as actual operations, with a breathtaking – and growing – number of sensors and other data points now being tapped and analysed.  

And Gartner's distinguished VP, Kristian Steenstrup, explains how the IoT space is developing along three distinct lines, the evolving security challenges and where he expects it to be in five years’ time. 

As outgoing Australian Computer Society CEO Andrew Johnson explains, tech remains among the fastest-growing professions in Australia. 

COVID has certainly thrown a spanner in the works, causing a big drop in the number of skilled workers from oversees. Yet on the other hand, according to Sharryn Napier, A/NZ boss with New Relic, enhanced capabilities for enabling people to work remotely from more locations has expanded the local talent pool, now and likely well into the future. 

We also chat with Sensis CIO, Aman Sahani about the ‘Skill-Will’ matrix and how tech leaders should try to think more holistically during the recruitment process.

Much of the discussion has focussed on the cyber and other risks associated with staff bringing in apps and accessing cloud platforms often without the knowledge – let alone permission - of CIOs and other tech leaders. 

But for many staff, especially those whose jobs demand higher levels of collaboration and communication, there’s no doubt they have become a powerful tool. Even more so during the pandemic this year. 

Tune in to hear from Deloitte’s chief transformation officer for APAC, Robert Hillard, Flinders University CIO, Kerrie Campbell and Andrew Lawrence, CIO with challenger telco Superloop, about how they’re not only managing this disruptive trend in tech, but also making it work for them and even changing how they think about their core IT systems.

In this episode, we hear from respected authorities at the coalface of this important, fast growing area of tech, including Steven Bonnici, CIO International Markets with Ford Motor Company, who shares how he’s leading a team harnessing AI and other technologies to better understand customer wants and needs, and ultimately building better cars and driving experiences.

Nicki Doble, Group CIO Cover-More Group explains how one of the world’s biggest travel insurers is using technology to give travellers better, more specific protection, and how the future of travel – whatever that’s going to look like - will be shaped by digital.

We also hear from senior Accenture partners Bronwyn van der Merva and Amit Bansal, about what the firm is seeing in the market right now, and hear their advice for CIOs looking to deliver better CX.

Nicole Gorton, APAC director with global recruiter, Robert Half, provides a deep dive on the company’s recently published A/NZ Salary Guide 2020, revealing the range of salaries currently on offer across the key tech jobs here and across the ditch. But she urges employers – and candidates - to think beyond just money.

And AIIA chief executive, Ron Gauci, shares some choice findings from the industry body’s own ‘Remuneration Report’, as well as its new whitepaper ‘'Building Australia’s digital future in a post-COVID world', which provides ample food for thought about Australia’s future as a tech-driven economy with a vastly larger tech workforce.

In this episode we talk to Nine’s chief information and technology officer Damian Cronan about his long journey managing the costs and applications of the cloud, as well as Rohan Penman, CIO with bespoke Tea brand T2 Tea, who shares a rather alarming anecdote about how series cloud bill shock can get.

And Gartner’s Chris Ganly confirms what many of us suspect, that there’s still plenty of confusion about cloud pricing still out there, even amongst quite senior tech leaders.

In this the second of our two-part episode on ‘Women in IT’ we delve a little deeper into what sexual discrimination looks like, and continuing the broader conversation about diversity, while also sharing some important facts that really challenge some of the key assumptions in this debate.

And as one of Australia’s most respected and successful technologists, Marie Johnson argues, discrimination and the need for diversity are issues that transcend gender. Just ask anyone who’s differently abled, or indeed, anyone who’s not ‘white’.

Still, Gartner VP Christie Struckman believes women especially can experience ‘death by 1000 cuts’, making it harder to actually retain them in the IT industry.

We conclude with Bill Von Hippel, professor of evolutionary biology at The University of Queensland, who says that for the most part women – just like men – who have the talent and potential to succeed in the IT industry make their own choices, rather than being the victims of discrimination. Which is not to say it doesn’t exist.

But as Hippel notes, participation of women in STEM disciplines and careers in significantly higher in countries like Turkey, UAE and Algeria, say than it is in countries like Sweden, The Netherlands or Finland where women have more tights and freedoms. But really, how do we distinguish between ‘discrimination’ and the normal push-and-shove, tensions that naturally arise especially in fast-paced, at times stressful industries like tech? 

It’s probably time to retire some long-held assumptions and start asking different questions. 

There’s certainly consensus around the need for greater awareness of the changing nature of the tech industry, and what it takes to be an effective leader, while the broader question of diversity is addresses, along with the important role of mentorship. 

This the first interactive panel conversation for The CIO Show, featuring:  

-       Suzanne Steel, managing director of Adobe in Australia/New Zealand 

-       Helen Vahdat, CIO of charity organisation Yourtown 

-       Nicola Burgess, CEO of Data Action

Also joining us is Guy Holland, partner in charge with KPMG’s digital and technology advisory

Also, two of our esteemed judges, renowned tech authorities Marie Johnson and Peter Nevin, share what they think it takes to make it into the list of Australia’s most successful technology leaders, and tips for preparing the best submission.

Entries have been open for a few weeks now but will be closing soon so tune in and get some valuable tips about how to give yourself the best shot.

The public sector here in Australia has seen some spectacular tech failures, from the robodebt debacle, the MyGov website crash as Australians who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 looked for a lifeline, and the QLD Health payroll scandal to name a few. 

The private sector has seen its fair share of tech failures too. Typically it’s vendors that cop the blame. And often rightly so.

Many people see the Australian subsidiaries of global vendors as glorified sales offices and not innovators. Of course, from the vendor’s point of view, some customers can be nightmares to work with too.

 In this episode of The CIO Show, CIOs and vendors discuss the good and bad of enterprise technology projects and what needs to happen if the industry is to fix its poor track record of failures.

We speak to Will Sessions, head of technology and innovation at the Australian National Maritime Museum; and Rowan Dollar, chief information officer at the Department of Human Services South Australia.

We also speak to Nathan Knight, director and general manager, at Lenovo's ANZ Data Centre Group; Cameron Deatsch, chief revenue officer at Atlassian; as well as market analyst, Tim Sheedy, who is principal advisor at Ecosystm.

In this episode of The CIO show, Accenture's A/NZ senior managing director tech services Scott Hahn tells us some three years of digital projects have been condensed into three months.

We also present in-depth and informative conversations with Mater Health’s CDO Alastair Sharman, travel insurance group Covermore’s CIO Nicki Doble, and Rohan Penman, global head of technology with bespoke tea retailer, T2 Tea.

Head of ICT with Melbourne's Austin Health, Alan Pritchard gets down to brass tacks on how AI should be applied in healthcare, while Data 61’s head of machine learning, Dr Richard Nock advises how organisations should use the 'AI Ethics Principles'.

And we speak with Marie Johnson, MD and CDO with the Centre for Digital Business, about the life of Nadia, the AI-powered, Cate Blanchett-voiced former star of the NDIS.

He chats to the University of Technology Sydney's associate dean, research strategy and management, Michael Blumenstein, about the hive of AI activity across startups and projects servicing enterprises and government agencies, and Newcrest Mining's chief information officer, Gavin Wood, about how the company is panning for digital gold. MinterEllison's chief digital officer, Gary Adler, also discusses how AI is shaking up the legal sector.