Australian Government CIO to retire

Australian Government CIO Ann Steward said she will retire at the end of the year.

“The Secretary of the Department of Finance and Deregulation is considering staffing arrangements in light of Ms Stewards’ departure, which will be announced in due course,” said a spokeswoman for the department.

Steward had been CIO for seven years. She recently has been a champion of open source software in the government.

“I have really appreciated the privilege of working with the AGIMO team, my colleagues in other agencies, the other Australian jurisdictions and in a range of overseas governments and agencies,” Steward wrote on the AGIMO blog. “The support I have received has been outstanding and sustained, including during some very demanding times.”

“I am very proud of our many achievements over the last seven years, supporting the governments of the day in the delivery of their programs and services, enabled by technology.”

Steward is also retiring from the Australian Public Service. She did not say what she planned to do next, but said she “won’t be losing contact with information technology.”

Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio said he hoped Steward’s successor would continue her work.

“In the next few years Australia has a great opportunity to leapfrog many other nations thanks to the deployment of its National Broadband Network (NBN),” he wrote on the Gartner blog. “The federal government can be at the forefront of this change both in an enabler and in a user role.

“What Ann and her colleagues have shown is that there is no need for mandating initiatives: when applying common sense, departments and agencies will follow because it is the right thing to do, not because they are forced to. This attitude is an asset that should not get lost in the transition.”

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