Queensland Govt breaks out CIO role

The Queensland Government has announced plans to appoint a "standalone" chief information officer tasked with driving consistent IT outcomes across state departments and agencies.

Premier Anna Bligh said today that the CIO role would be advertised for the first time in weekend newspapers.

The CIO would report directly to the state's ICT Minister Simon Finn. They would be required to "provide regular reports to cabinet on the implementation of ICT policy and performance", Bligh said.

In return, the CIO would be given an "independent" office and "CEO-level" role "with sufficient autonomy and strength-of-mandate to drive consistent outcomes across government", Bligh said.

The CIO office had previously fallen under the auspices of the Department of Public Works.

The altered Government CIO role was a response to a recommendation made by PricewaterhouseCoopers' (PwC) in its review of the state's whole-of-Government IT provider CorpTech late last year.

The PwC review was commissioned in the aftermath of an over-time, over-budget Queensland Health payroll implementation that led to thousands of payroll anomalies.

The state had been advised to review its previous Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) office under Public Works to improve consistency, accountability and clarity of responsibilities.

Bligh said the new CIO would be the first "in any government in Australia that will be at a CEO level and will report directly to the Minister" for ICT.

"[The new CIO] will be responsible for a number of areas of government activity: ICT project and program management, including ensuring that whole-of-government projects provide value for money; ICT planning and the implementation of the Towards Q2 ICT strategic plan; government enterprise architecture; industry liaison and workforce capability; and shared services policy," Bligh said.

Bligh said that the director-general of the Department of Public Works would "continue to lead shared service delivery, as the accountable officer for the newly-created Queensland Shared Services, and will remain responsible for both CITEC and Smart Service Queensland".

"What we're essentially doing is creating a contestable environment between the areas of government responsible for providing shared services and the policy functions providing advice to government," she said.