iTnews last night held its fourth annual Benchmark Awards, a program that celebrates Australia's finest IT leaders. At a gala dinner adjoining the CIO Strategy Summit at Melbourne's Grand Hyatt, winners were awarded across eight industry categories.
Before we hand out the awards, iTnews interviews the finalists for the Benchmark Awards to learn more about the projects they were nominated for and the challenges that came along with them. Pictured: Professor David Abramson from the University of Queensland and John MacDonald from the University of Southern Queensland discuss their projects.
Industrial finalists Kelvin McGrath from Asciano and Norse Skog's Sandeep Dharni discuss the difficulties of innovating in a tight market.
Finalist in the federal government category Graham Gathercole takes the audience through his mobility project at the Department of Agriculture.
CrimTrac's Lee Walton discusses the ACORN cyber crime reporting project his agency developed in conjunction with other state and territory agencies.
State & local government finalists David Schneider, from the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet, and Tasmania Police's Todd Crawford share their experiences of innovating in government.
Australian Unity's Tahir Tanveer outlines his end-to-end platform overhaul.
Cabrini Health's Judith Day discusses what still needs to be done to ensure e-health records are a success.
Telstra's Neil Louis was named a finalist for the Telstra Air wi-fi project.
Queensland Urban Utilities' Nina Du Thaler used geospatial data to give her organisation holistic visibility over its operations.
Retail finalists Wayne McMahon from Domino's Pizza and Dick Smith's Paul Keen debate the coolest upcoming technology.
Westpac's John Cooper outlines the mammoth data centre migration the bank undertook.
Colin Turner of ANZ Bank was named a finalist for the 'common decision platform' - a systems consolidation drive.
Herron Todd White's Darren Oliver explains why he took a big leap into open source technologies.
A bit of a break for drinks in between .....
.... And then it was time for the awards. Domino's Pizza CIO Wayne McMahon won the retail category for his GPS Driver Tracker project.
The Genomics Virtual Laboratory won Professor David Abramson the crown for the Education category.
Andrew Walduck's 'Building Future Ready IT' program of work won him and Australia Post the federal government award.
Todd Crawford picked up the state & local crown for Tasmania Police for his mobility project.
Queensland Urban Utilities CIO Nina Du Thaler won the Utilities category for her Q-Hubs project.
Peter O'Halloran picked up the Healthcare award for the National Blood Authority for the second year in a row - this time for the BloodNet project.
Qantas CIO Luc Hennekens - not pictured - took out the Industrial category. Project manager Blake Millard was on hand to accept the award.
Colin Turner's common decision platform earned ANZ Bank the Finance category award.
And the Benchmark Awards 2016 CIO of the year went to the National Blood Authority's Peter O'Halloran. Congratulations to all winners and finalists.
iTnews last night held its fourth annual Benchmark Awards, a program that celebrates Australia's finest IT leaders. At a gala dinner adjoining the CIO Strategy Summit at Melbourne's Grand Hyatt, winners were awarded across eight industry categories.