Crime Commission fills new CIO position

The Australian Crime Commission has officially appointed acting CIO Maria Milosavljevic into the CIO role on a permanent basis.

Maria Milosavljevic

The agency’s IT strategy and function was formerly developed and delivered by the national manager with help from the chief technology officer, but the ACC lobbied and won approval for the creation of a CIO position late last year.

Recently appointed chief technology officer Narelle Lovett will report into Milosavljevic. Lovett joined the agency in August last year as CTO following the departure of former CTO Andrew Cann.

Lovett’s role deals with the delivery and definition of the technology, where Milosavljevic is tasked with IT strategy. 

The pair already have a significant list of projects to tackle over the coming months.

The Crime Commission currently uses the Australian Federal Police’s real-time online management information system, and will need to review whether to adopt the incoming successor system, expected to go live in March 2017.

The agency is currently working with the AFP while the national police agency finalises its strategy for the project, and expects to be in a better position to made a decision in the next 12 months.

In the meantime, Milosavljevic and her new 70-strong Information Branch - formed last July from a formely "fragmented" approach to IT - will spend time developing the agency's new five-year information and technology strategic plan. 

The document will provide a much-needed update for the ACC's IT direction over the next five years, Milosavljevic said.

"The previous plan was written in quite a different environment, so it really does need to be updated in the new environment we’re operating in," she said.

"It will cover ICT and also more broadly, analytics and knowledge management .. [but] mostly it’s about fitting in with the environment that we are now working in.

"There is a lot more collaboration around government and law enforcement, and the analytics capability wasn’t previously part of the remit, and that will factor a lot. The emphasis on engagement will also factor quite strongly, [as will] the information flows for the organisation, which weren’t previously included."

The plan will also include the next step for the agency's Fusion capability - developed internally and powered by a platform from US software vendor Palantir - which was given the green light by the Government in 2010 and funding of $14.5 million until this year.

The network makes it easier for the ACC's analysts to identify patterns of behaviour through data by connecting a number of disparate systems and datasets.

The new five-year strategy will also outline the future for the ACID national crime intelligence database, which is used by 20 law enforcement agencies across the country. 

Read about Maria Milosavljevic's strategy for collecting and analysing unstructured data at the Crime Commission here.