Podcast
Articles by Byron Connolly
Podcast
CIO Leadership Live with Chris Locke, CIO, Flight Centre
Australian travel agency group, Flight Centre, lost close to $1.2 billion during COVID. During the height of the pandemic, 160 technology staff lost their jobs as the Australian business shifted from a $103 million monthly cost base down to $30 million. In this episode of CIO Leadership Live Australia, Flight Centre's chief information officer, Chris Locke, discusses how his tech team is doing more with less, as well as the technology initiatives that are helping the organisation recover as people start travelling again.
Podcast
CIO Leadership Live with Sami Yalavac, interim managing director, Bupa Health Services
In 2006, Sami Yalavac started working at Bupa as a developer and project manager. Ten years later, he was appointed as chief information officer, a role he held until only two months ago when he was elevated to interim managing director for Bupa Health Services following the departure of incumbent, Dwayne Crombie. In this episode of CIO Leadership Live Australia, Sami Yalavac talks to CIO Australia’s editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly, about how he is finding the role so far, why being a chief executive will make him a stronger CIO if he returns to that position, the skills that tech leaders need to move into these types of roles, as well as why the next generation of chief executives should be coming from technology groups.
Podcast
CIO Leadership Live with Glenn Archer, visiting fellow, Australian National University
Veteran technology executive Glenn Archer speaks to CIO Australia's editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly, about the reasons why digital transformation projects across Australian government agencies are continuing to underdeliver, the failure of agencies to collaborate and integrate their systems, as well as an over-reliance on big consulting firms. He also discusses why trust in government IT and its use of data has "fundamentally crashed," what the future potentially holds for the Digital Transformation Agency and more.
Podcast
CIO Leadership Live with QBE’s Dominique Cotte
When COVID hit in 2020, Australian Dominique Cotte lost her job as a first officer flying 777s for Emirates. Like others in the aviation industry, Cotte has retrained as a cyber security specialist and is working in London for insurance giant, QBE. Cotte speaks to CIO Australia's editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly, about her career change, how the key skills required to be a good pilot play very well as a cyber security specialist, as well as her ambitions to one day possibly become a CISO.
Feature
How Canteen debunked IT myths in the not-for-profit sector
Limited budgets and legacy systems are a common issue in many industries and that is also true for not-for-profit (NFP) organisations. When Raul Caceres joined Canteen, an Australian support organisation for young people living with cancer, in 2019, Caceres found a failed CRM implementation, issues with the organisations websites and projects blowing out the budgets.
Feature
Hybrid work: 2 Australian CIOs share lessons learned
Angela Coble and John Sutherland share what they learned about hybrid work in healthcare and how to ensure staff were comfortable with the COVID-19-imposed reality and how they moved forward once restrictions lifted.
Interview
Exit interview: Ajay Bhatia’s journey from technologist to managing director
Bhatia discusses successes and failures during his 13 years at the vehicles e-commerce company Carsales.
Feature
CIO exit interview: Steve Hodgkinson, Victoria Department of Health
Hodgkinson reflects on the seven years with the Victoria health department, both what worked well and what didn’t.
Feature
How Flight Centre’s Australian IT team is flying out of a COVID crisis
CIO Chris Locke details how the organisation is recovering from the devastating economic impact of the pandemic as well as its technology strategy for 2022 as Australians start travelling again.
Interview
How NSW Health IT deployed its Sydney COVID-19 vaccination centre
Sydney Local Health District CIO Richard Taggart describes the implementation that inoculates 7,000 Australians every day, with higher numbers planned.
Feature
AI to aid young Aussies in crisis, but kid gloves still needed
The mental health of young people in Australia took a big hit in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the economy and provided job insecurity for many thousands of parents across the nation.
News Analysis
The Trans-Tasman travel bubble may not matter that much to CIOs
Remote work has made the need for in-person collaboration much less, and CIOs aren’t ready to have their teams resume prepandemic travel patterns.
Feature
Lendlease’s dynamic CIO-duo on digitising construction
The construction giant's co-CIOs Harvey Worton and David Lipscomb discuss their roles and the tools that are driving digitisation across the sector.
Feature
Are Asia-Pacific tech leaders finally getting more recognition?
The chief information officers’ decades long struggle for recognition across the executive group was cemented in 2020 thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
News
CIO movements: Bankwest’s COO Rebecca Mitchell becomes CIO
Bankwest veteran, Rebecca Mitchell, is the new chief information officer at the CBA-owned organisation following the departure of Andy Weir last November.
News
Dr Malcolm Thatcher new Australian Digital Health Agency CTO
Former Queensland Health tech chief, Dr Malcolm Thatcher, is the new chief technology officer at the Australian Digital Health Agency.
News
GWMWater completes Victoria’s largest digital water metering rollout
Victoria's GWMWater has used IoT technologies to create what it claims is the first application of large-scale digital watering metering across the state.
News
Christian Rasmussen new WA Health Support Services CIO, David Banger joins Infrastructure Nation
Western Australia's Health Support Services (HSS) has appointed former Curtin University tech boss, Christian Rasmussen as its new chief information officer. Rasmussen replaces Jonathan Smith who has been acting CIO since Holger Kaufmann's departure last July.
News