AGIMO restructured as new government CIO, CTO appointed

UPDATED Commonwealth ICT policy making will take a different tack as peak strategy organisation AGIMO is split into two different parts after a significant reorganisation of the group's status within the Department of Finance and Deregulation (DFD).

According to a blog post by current AGIMO Policy and Planning Division head Glenn Archer, from 4 February 2013 AGIMO will be subsumed under a new DFD division called the Governance and Resource Management Group (GRMG), with Archer to serve as CIO of the new organisation.

AGIMO's other operations, which had previously been managed as its Agency Services Division, will be grafted onto DFD's Procurement Division to create a new organisation, called the Technology and Procurement Division (TPD).

TPD will sit within DFD's Business, Procurement and Asset Management Group, which will be headed by Jan Mason, currently deputy secretary of the Asset Management and Parliamentary Services operations.

TPD itself will be run by John Sheridan – formerly first assistant secretary with AGIMO – who will become Australian government chief technology officer and will also serve as government procurement coordinator. Sheridan's role will include the provision of government service delivery and support spanning networks, online services, and ICT procurement.

"The work of AGIMO has been diverging over time between two distinct areas," Archer writes, "whole of government policy and governance, and whole of government services delivery (eg networks, online, contract management). As such we have created two distinct roles to serve each of these areas more fully."

By keeping the new entities under the umbrella of DFD, Sheridan said the department will focus on whole-of-government strategies including management of government resource assets, contracts, superannuation, procurement, and more. The department will be posting regular updates on its Web site, and will be engaging with stakeholders and the public to chart the future direction of the government's ICT strategies.

Andrea Di Maio, a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner focused on the public sector, was enthusiastic about the changes, calling it "really good news for the Australian government".

The decision to fill the CIO and CTO positions with current AGIMO staff was a significant vote for continuity around AGIMO's efforts in Government 2.0 activities such as its ongoing data centre as a service (DCaaS) efforts, Di Maio said.

"They are living proof that insiders can perfectly fill high visibility executive roles, without necessarily appointing people from outside government, like the US and especially the UK have kept doing over the last few years....I am very pleased to see that the public sector is able to recognize its best people with new and challenging roles."

The shakeup comes in the wake of the resignation of Commonwealth CIO Ann Steward, who recently announced she would retire at the end of this year after commencing the role in 2005.

It reflects the findings of the Williams Review, which found that AGIMO should focus more on identifying common approaches to ICT across government. Archer said the new policy will also create "a stronger capacity" to deliver on the Australian Public Service ICT Strategy Vision 2012-2015. – David Braue

UPDATED 19/12 to add Gartner comment.