Updated: Sydney Water’s George Hunt spreads wings into strategy role

Sydney Water CIO George Hunt has taken on the role of acting general manager, customer, strategy and regulation, taking over from Sian Leydon, who has gone on maternity leave for 12 months.

Hunt clinched the No 1 position on the CIO50 List last year and is currently a judge of the CIO50 2019.

Hunt told CIO Australia there’s a person acting in the CIO role for now, but that person won’t be named for a few weeks.

Hunt said he’s excited about his new strategy role – a career move that he feels will inspire other CIOs to spread their wings.

“It’s encouraging to CIO’s to move towards a strategy role I feel,” he said, recognising his situation provides encouragement to his peers.

While at Sydney Water, Hunt has been using innovative technologies in a bid to provide insights that enable the organisation to deliver better services.

Hailing from the UK and with many years of water experience under his belt, Hunt landed in Australia in early 2016 with a vision to make Sydney Water a hyper-connected utility, CIO Australia earlier reported.

Digital technologies would improve efficiency and collaboration across all of Sydney Water’s businesses – connecting traditional groups with technology and challenging the way the organisation used its data.

Hunt’s goal was to make the organisation a customer-centric entity. He has already restructured Sydney Water’s technology function, adopting a three speed factory model and a ‘design, build, run’ set-up.

He also overhauled the utility’s ERP, CRM and 30-year-old billing system, which formally went live two weeks ago.