Immigration CIO leaves to join Health

The Department of Immigration's chief information officer Matt Yannopoulos will leave the agency to take over as CIO at the federal Department of Health.

Matt Yannopoulos

Yannopoulos will end an almost two-year stint as Immigration's top tech chief in July to take on a position held by former Health CIO Paul Madden, as first reported by Intermedium.

Madden was moved into a new special adviser role at Health - responsible for strategic health systems and information management - as the result of an internal restructure several months ago.

His remit includes the agency's e-health initiatives.

Following Madden's promotion, Bettina Konti was placed into the role of CIO.

She will now move into the department's e-health division under Madden to deliver the switch from opt-in to opt-out for the national myHealth Record (formerly PCEHR).

Yannopoulos will take on the title of CIO and responsibility for the systems that support the Department’s operations.

Health recently completed a major outsourcing drive, ending a 15-year relationship with IBM to hand responsibility for its infrastructure and support to Datacom.

Yannopoulos' departure from Immigration follows a restructure ahead of the agency's mandated merger with Customs, which is due to take effect on July 1 this year.

The restructure saw former Customs CIO Randall Brugeaud parachuted into a new IT transformation role in the combined agency, which gave him a wider remit and responsibility for transforming IT as well as other areas of the business. It placed the two IT chiefs on the same executive level.

Yannopoulos was to continue as CIO of the merged body, but in a role focused on running IT from the operations side. 

Brugeaud's major capability division was given responsibility over hand-picked areas of technology, such as traveller border clearance, advanced analytics, biometrics systems, enterprise case management, CCTV, and screening technologies.

Responsibility for these IT capabilities were to be handed back into the operational IT division under Yannopoulos for maintenance and support once the transformations were complete.

A spokesperson for Immigration and Border Protection said arrangements for a replacement CIO will be announced "in due course". 

Yannopoulos leaves an agency with a projected average staffing level for 2015-16 of 13,700, for a department expected to count 3202 employees over the next year.