NSW Justice CIO takes interim role at Customer Service

NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) has tapped Naomi Youness to temporarily lead IT as CIO Aarti Joshi embarks on maternity leave.

Youness is currently the CIO of the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, a role she has held since July 2019.

She will now hold the role of interim CIO at DCS during Joshi's leave. 

Joshi was promoted from the role of acting procurement officer to DCS group CIO in July 2023.

Writing on LinkedIn, Joshi said: “I’ve been blown away by the support from my customers and delivery partners, broader team and executive group, and of course my mentors and sponsors in their celebration of my embarking on this personal chapter.

“Taking some time off to embrace this new chapter with my family has also provided me an opportunity to reflect as I approach two years in the role of group CIO - and it’s just flown by.”

Joshi added that her tenure so far has “been a time of transformation, of strengthening [the] foundations and positioning the team for the future”.

The department recently kicked off the process to re-platform its freshly consolidated SAP system onto the vendor’s managed cloud infrastructure, having transitioned 60,000 users to the new system.

Youness’ department took over management of the consolidation project from DCS at the end of 2021.

The DCJ is now overseeing the ERP system’s shared service agreement with the Department of Planning Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI).