The CIO movements that made headlines in 2018

Nick Woodruff, January: Promoted from within the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade), Woodruff had previously served as assistant general manager of digital transformation and information management and as the global manager of ICT service delivery at the commission. He replaces Nils van Boxsel, who vacated the role in 2017.​

Rob Irving, January: Irving left the University of New England after seven years when presented with the opportunity to direct IT at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Irving and his family relocated to the UAE after delivering a large technology replacement program that included joining the AARNet fibre optic link and updating staff collaboration software tools.​

Jon Cumming, January: The ACT's inaugural CDO decided to "self disrupt" and move to London to reunite members of his family. Cumming helped deliver the ACT's digital strategy, which is focused on shifting the territory government to the cloud and common platforms in order to help directorates quickly ramp services up and down. He had previously spent almost seven years as the CIO of New Zealand’s Department of Corrections.​

Tim Catley, January: Catley became the new national security CIO when he joined the Department of Home Affairs after six years heading up technology for Transport for NSW. He then quit the Department of Home Affairs six months later.

Russell Morris, January: Morris joined energy grid operator TransGrid after the company spent six months searching for an IT chief. He relocated from the UK where he spent five years as IT lead for Northern Powergrid. He previously held roles at British Telecom and other utilities.​

Nicole Sheffield, February: Sheffield left News Corp a year into her tenure as CDO to explore 'entrepreneurial opportunities'. She had been promoted to the CDO role to replace previous CTO Alisa Bowen, who left before a serious reshuffle. Sheffield is now the executive general manager of community and consumer at Australia Post.  

Robyn Elliot, February: After improving the flexibility and efficiency of Fairfax's tech platforms and embedding agile development techniques, Elliott left the media giant at the end of February for property developer Stockland as its inaugural chief of technology and innovation in March. Elliott had joined Fairfax in 2015 after a long career leading IT at Foxtel.

Ian Frew, March: Frew joined the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) after an almost year-long search by the agency, taking over from acting CIO Susan Monkley. Frew was appointed as the agency continued to ramp up the scheme towards a membership of 460,000 by 2020. His previous post was as a consultant at Veridical Integration. Prior to that, he spent nine years as Insurance Australia Group's CIO.

Sarv Girn, March: Girn exited the Reserve Bank after almost six years, landing in the newly-created position of chief innovation and transformation officer at MLC Life Insurance. There, Girn took the reigns of a $400 million transformation intended to "deliver the most advanced digital and process infrastructure" for improved customer experience. Girn's previous experience in finance includes stints at the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.​

Greg Wells, March: A serial CIO with extensive practice operating in the NSW public service, Wells was appointed whole-of-government chief information and digital officer in March. Wells joined the Department of Finance, Services and Innovation in July, where he was handed responsibility for the government's $2.5 billion yearly IT spend as well as key IT infrastructure like GovDC, which he played a key role in establishing as Health CIO.

Dominic Hatfield, March: Following Nicole Sheffield's departure the previous month, News Corp again restructured its IT management, with Hatfield being promoted to CIO with an expanded remit to include business intelligence and enterprise data. Digital functions fell under the control of managing director of the News DNA group, Julian Delany.

Jamie Norton, March: The tax office poached NEC Australia's cyber chief, replacing CISO Steve McCauley who left the agency in May 2017. Norton spent a year as Tenable Network Security’s ANZ regional manager, and five years as national manager of Check Point Software. He also spent two years as CISO of the World Health Organisation.

John Romano, March: Romano left Telstra after two years as the telco's CIO - the third CIO to leave in three years. This marked the end of a long career at Telstra for Romano, who had worked for the company in various executive roles for more than a decade. As CIO, Romano was leading a significant digitisation drive as part of Telstra's three-pronged, $3 billion investment into its operations.

Tony Forward, March: QBE Insurance's chief information officer was made redundant at the company during a restructure that saw his technology team reconfigured and placed under a new executive. Forward had been with the company for five years, with previous stints as CIO or technology lead at IAG, Westpac, and BT Financial Group.

John Ansley, March: After spending 16 months as Essential Energy CIO, Ansley was let go following a disagreement about the strategic direction of the firm's IT. Despite the disagreement, Ansley said he enjoyed his time at Essential, where he deployed drones to improve asset management, and rolled out 3500 iPads and iPhones to field staff to digitise reporting and management. He would later resurface in September as COO of mining tech firm Commit Works. 

Matt Goonan, April: Goonan became the Digital Transformation Agency's permanent CTO after acting in the role for several months in 2017. Goonan had worked in the private sector before taking charge of the DTA's digital platforms, most recently leading BAE Systems Applied Intelligence’s national security delivery team.

Matt Mansour, April: Mansour joined QBE Insurance from British financial services giant Barclays, where he was chief technology information security officer. The restructure that resulted in QBE's previous CIO Tony Forward's exit meant Mansour would now report into the new COO position, rather than the CEO. He previously held senior IT roles at General Electric.

Gayan Benedict, April: Benedict was promoted from within the Reserve Bank of Australia to fill Sarv Girn's shoes after his departure in March. Benedict had served as the bank's deputy head of technology services since 2014, and before that spent more than a year as a senior IT manager at the RBA. He previously held senior IT roles at Westpac, Travelex and Oracle.

Jack Blayney, April: After three years as Victoria Police's CIO, Jack Blayney revealed his intentions to retire in April. His post would be taken up by crime command's assistant commissioner Steve Fontana at the end of the month. Blayney oversaw the force's $227 million Blue Connect program, which entailed the rollout of 8500 phones to officers, along with body cameras to frontline officers.

Bettina Konti, April: The ACT poached Konti from her executive position at the Department of Health to replace Jon Cumming as whole-of-government CDO. The ACT said Konti was "an experienced leader who has delivered major multi-disciplinary transformation programs and services” across government.

David Butler, May: Butler left the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet after 4 years as CIO and director of operations. He has since become Director of Fines Victoria Operations within the Department of Justice and Regulation.

Brad Bastow, May: Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's CTO Brad Bastow left the public service to front AUCloud, a local version of service provider UKCloud. He spent almost three years at the department, leading innovation on infrastructure services and end-user computing.

Paul Dulfer, June: Victorian Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority CIO Paul Dulfer departed the agency responsible for Triple Zero calls in the state after two years. He joined after seven-and-a-half years as CIO and in other managerial roles at the State Revenue Office. Prior to Dulfer's two-year tenure, the agency managed to burn through three CIOs in just 12 months.

Kelly Ferguson, June: Ferguson joined Telstra as its director, IT technology and infrastructure, replacing John Romano. Ferguson spent two years at Origin Energy as CIO, where she instigated a mammoth public cloud push to move more than 1000 workloads out of its data centres.

Terry Powell, June: Powell replaced long-time Domino's Pizza CIO Wayne MacMahon, who departed to take up the IT chief role at Hungry Jack's owner Competitive Foods Australia. MacMahon oversaw the shift of the pizza company's global online ordering system off AWS IaaS to Azure PaaS.

Simon Benney, June: Mining giant Rio Tinto announced it would be moving its global CIO role to Brisbane, after Singapore-based CIO Benney's exit earlier in the year.

Andrew Cann, July: Cann's two-month secondment to WA Police as its CIO became a permanent gig in July, following three years at the state's office of the chief information officer. The reshuffle coincided with the new financial year and a budgetary commitment from the government to optimise WAPOL's technology estate.

Matt Toohey, July: ME Bank named Toohey as its permanent chief information officer, replacing Mark Gay who resigned earlier in the year. His previous role was as general manager for delivery and engineering at Bankwest, with previous CIO experience at Wesfarmers and iiNet.

Holger Kaufmann, July: The former head of GovNext-ICT reform at the WA's office of the chief information officer became WA Health's first permanent CIO since 2010. Kaufmann took charge of all major health IT programs and projects in the state, including Health Support Services' $140 million IT operational spend.

Ben McMullen, July: Five years after starting at Service NSW and after one year as its CIO, McMullen moved to Suncorp as executive manager of the bank's new strategic capability marketplace. At Service NSW, McMullen helped stabilise the agency's technology environment and shifted the IT infrastructure to a multi-vendor hybrid cloud environment.

Eamonn Rooney, July: Rooney stepped down from the federal Treasury after almost a year-and-a-half at the department. He had become Treasury CIO to replace Peter Alexander after the latter moved to the DTA in September 2016.

Christian Rusmussen, July: Rasmussen ended a five-and-a-half year CIO stint at Curtin University. He had helped kick off smart campus initiatives at the uni, increasing the use of digital technologies and analytics to enhance the operations and the student experience.

Lynn Warneke, August: Warneke moved from Deakin University's IT executive suite to the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet to replace David Butler as CIO. Warneke spent five years at Deakin, mostly transforming the customer experience with emerging technologies. She helped deploy the university's AI-backed virtual assistant Genie, and its Scout IoT location-based service.

Dave Curran, August: Westpac's stalwart CIO Dave Curran announced in August he would be retiring from the bank at the end of January 2019. Citibank's global consumer banking CTO Craig Bright was named as Curran's replacement. Curran has overseen one of the most complex banking transformations in Australia, resulting in the replacement of billions of dollars of legacy platforms without junking its core banking platform.

Anthony Ritchie, September: NSW Finance promoted Ritchie to CIO to fill the position left by Richard Host. Ritchie had previously served within the department’s government and corporate services division as the head of NSW procurement and government services, before shifting under the government chief information and digital officer.

Jenson Spencer, September: Queensland Police lost its inaugural CDO after Spencer jumped to the Australian Tax Office to become an assistant commissioner. He spent two years with QPS with a focus on ensuring the policing agency's long-term innovation.

Judy Stokker, October: The Queensland University of Technology’s vice president of technology and inaugural chief information officer Judy Stokker announced her plans to retire at the end of 2018. Stokker led ongoing adjustments to the university’s IT strategy and ecosystems, including the amalgamation of QUT’s audiovisual systems and its IT functions as revealed by iTnews in May last year, and an update of the uni's business process management platforms.

Graeme Dunn, October: Dunn joined the Victorian Emergency Services and Telecommunication Authority to replace Paul Dulfer, who left the post of CIO in June. Dunn came to ESTA from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) where he spent seven years as the registrar’s CIO.

Jason Cowie, October: Curtin University named Gartner’s managing vice president of service delivery enablement Jason Cowie as its new CIO starting in January 2019, replacing Christian Rasmussen. Before moving to Florida to work with Gartner, Cowie was the inaugural CIO at Australian engineering and professional services firm Calibre Group, winning an iTnews Benchmark Award for his overhaul of the company's IT processes. He also spent six years as CIO at mining services firm Macmahon.

Michael McNamara, October: The Department of Human Services finally found a permanent chief information officer, appointing ANZ architecture executive Michael McNamara to the role. McNamara will take over from interim CIO Charles McHardie, assuming control of the $1 billion root-and-branch technology overhaul known as WPIT (welfare payments infrastructure transformation). McNamara’s prior experience also includes CIO of Colonial and head of delivery at CBA.

Steven Issa, November: The Australian Digital Health Agency secured Issa, the executive responsible for Service NSW’s network of service centres, as its inaugural chief digital officer. He has spent the last four-and-a-half years at NSW's central service delivery agency, most recently managing face-to-face and digital customer service channels as its service centres director. Issa will start as CDO in January 2019, tasked with driving customer focused outcomes across the agency.

Richard Hilliard, November: Hilliard joined Orix after six years at mortgage broker Aussie Home Loans, most recently as its head of digital transformation. He replaces Mary Moran as CIO, and will oversee the array of platforms, integrations and internal processes necessary to manage the large volumes of fleet data provided through Orix's new OneView customer platform.

Greg Italiano, November: Italiano replaces former WA government CIO Giles Nunis, who called time as the head of the then Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) in February to move to Deloitte. Italiano spent the last year-and-a-half overseeing the digital transformation of the state’s Department of Justice as executive director of corporate services. In his new role, he will have carriage of the state’s digital reform agenda, which remains focused on improving online service delivery, reforming ICT procurement and developing a strong “culture of data protection and sharing”.

Ian Jansen, December: Jansen landed at Service NSW in March after spending three years working to transition the Department of Industry's technology environment to the cloud. The position of chief digital and product officer was created for Jansen, who took over responsibility for Service NSW's core digital products, including the MyService NSW account, website and mobile app, digital forms and transactions and the payment services platform. However, it was revealed that Jansen left the post in December, after only nine months in the job.