Immigration, Customs restructure IT leadership

The CIO role at Australia’s Customs agency has been dissolved and the man who held the job parachuted into a new IT transformation role as a result of the organisation's merger with the Department of Immigration.

Randall Brugeaud

Randall Brugeaud was appointed Customs’ CIO in June last year after the department enacted one of many organisational restructures in line with its 2013-18 blueprint for reform, and ahead of its merger into Immigration, due to be completed by July 1 this year.

Until taking over the role (previously filled by former CIO Rachel Noble), Brugeaud had spent over a year as Customs’ chief technology officer.

In the lead-up to the merger, Brugeaud was recently appointed as the joint agency’s new first assistant secretary overseeing a new major capability division.

His position delivers him a wider remit and will see him focus on transforming IT alongside other areas of the business.

Matt Yannopoulos, who has served as Immigration’s chief information officer since August 2013, will continue as CIO of the merged body. His role will be focused on running IT.

Both Yannopoulos and Brugeaud will report into Michael Manthorpe, the deputy secretary of Immigration’s enabling group.

Brugeaud's major capability division is a new unit responsible for the design, coordination and implementation of all new major capabilities across the new immigration entity (apart from air and marine).

In terms of IT, the division has been given responsibility over hand-picked areas of technology - such as traveller border clearance, advanced analytics, biometrics systems, enterprise case management, CCTV, and screening technologies - that Immigration expects will be the subject of major change.

Once the transformation projects are complete, the responsibility for the IT capabilities will be handed back into the operational IT division under Yannopoulos for maintenance and support, an Immigration spokesperson said.

“Randall Brugeaud and Matt Yannopoulos are working together to support the portfolio’s operational environment as well as its transformation agenda,” the spokesperson said. “Matt and Randall’s positions are at the same level and highly co-dependent."