CSIRO farewells CIO

Australia's peak science and research organisation has farewelled its long-time chief information officer David Toll and is now on the hunt for a replacement.

Toll recently departed the Canberra-based CSIRO for greener pastures in Sydney after seven years at the helm of the organisation's IT function, and 11 years at the Government-funded body itself.

Toll, a certified accountant, was named CSIRO's CIO in 2007. Prior to his appointment to the role, he managed the organisation's property and finance functions.

The CSIRO is now advertising for a replacement to the position, which is being filled in the interim by David Williams, the organisation's executive director for national facilities and collections.

The new CIO will need to be comfortable leading an IT team of around 250 across 27 sites, and a division which is split into four functions: IT services, scientific computing, information services, and e-research.

The department provides IT support across the entire CSIRO, including its specialist research computing facilities as well as office infrastructure support, data storage and online library information services.

The hire will report into the CSIRO's executive director of national facilities and collections, and will also sit on the CSIRO Executive Management Council.

He or she will also be responsible for developing a new strategic IT plan for the organisation.

The current plan supports the CSIRO's 2011-15 strategy and will soon need to be renewed, taking into account "wider government issues on standardisation, and the role of the cloud in providing the platform capability", the organisation said.

The job application closes towards the end of November.

Toll's departure comes at a difficult time for an organisation which is attempting to restructure itself to deal with having $111.4 million pulled from its budget over the next four years by the federal government.

For the 2014-2015 year, 700 jobs are expected to be cut, on top of 477 jobs let go in the past twelve months. A further 80 are forecast to be slashed in the 2015-16 year.

Additionally, up to 600 of the CSIRO's non-ongoing and contract workers are will not be reinstated when their contracts come up for renewal as a result of the Government’s public service hiring freeze.