Telstra CIO John Romano exits

Telstra’s chief information officer and executive director digitisation John Romano has departed the telco, the company has confirmed.

Romano has been with Telstra for close to 30 years, in a variety of technology and executive management roles, and took the dual CIO/CDO role in 2016. Romano’s last day at Telstra was March 9, the company said.

“We will commence the search for a permanent replacement. Chief technology officer Hakan Eriksson, an accomplished leader during his time with Ericsson including as CEO Australia and New Zealand, will act as CIO in addition to his responsibilities,” a Telstra spokesperson said.

Over the past year Romano has overseen a major digitisation program which has seen new cloud-based systems – including Salesforce and ServiceNow – being rolled out and legacy systems and applications decommissioned.

Other initiatives, as reported by sister publication Computerworld, have included replacing multiple customer notification systems with a single notification engine and the rollout of a revamped service status page that offers more granular detail about service outages and expected recovery times.

He also oversaw the launch of a business focused mobile app mdash; Telstra Connect mdash; that offers tools for enterprise customers and Expert Finder, which helps customers directly contact a relevant Telstra expert.

Romano also helped facilitate the adoption of agile methodologies within the technology function. As of the end of last year more than 100 teams were using agile, with the expectation that 400 teams, some 5,000 staff, would be within a few years.

Prior to taking the CIO role, Romano led the Telstra Property Group and was responsible for leading a national integrated and cost-effective network facilities and property strategy across the company.

Romano replaced Erez Yarkoni who left the role in October 2016, to return to his homeland, the United States.