CIO 100: Department of Internal Affairs

THE DEPARTMENT OF Internal Affairs (Te Tari Taiwhenua) is tasked with issuing passports; administering applications for citizenship and lottery grants; enforcing censorship and gambling laws; registering births, deaths, marriages and civil unions; supplying support services to Ministers of the Crown; and advising the government on a range of relevant policies and issues.

Its CEO, Colin MacDonald, is also the New Zealand Government chief information officer. MacDonald spearheaded the revision of the Government ICT Strategy in 2015 to ensure that, in a fast changing technology environment, it can achieve the government’s aim of an ICTenabled transformation of public services.

This perspective is the foundation of the business transformation projects at the DIA.

Chris East, who is CIO and general manager technology services and solutions, reports to Tim Occleshaw, deputy chief executive, service and system transformation and also the government technology chief. East leads a team of 220.

East says a major programme of work for the team this year will be modernisation of the technology infrastructure and capability at the DIA to enable better ways of working. This will include direct access, enterprise Wi-Fi, and improved remote office working on top of a modern, f lexible infrastructure base.

East says the work covers modernisation of the department’s multiple electronic content management systems into a single, comprehensive and productivity enabled system that is delivered as a service.

East says the biggest improvement IT delivered for the organisation in the past year was moving 2500 seats to a full virtual desktop via the All of Government (AoG) desktop-as-aservice (DaaS) offering.