Queensland restructures IT department

Queensland’s peak IT agency, the Department of Science, IT, Innovation and the Arts (DSITIA), has gone through a major structural shake-up after shedding 600 jobs in the last full financial year.

The department has rebuilt its lines of reporting to align with a new set of priorities.

The latest organisation chart to come out of DSITIA shows responsibility for IT procurement and the soon-to-be divested infrastructure provider CITEC has been pulled out of deputy director general Andrew Spina’s government ICT division. Spina has instead gained oversight of the state’s “one-stop-shop” initiative and developing Queensland’s digital economy.

A new ‘strategic ICT’ wing has been set up to manage CITEC, as well as outgoing Glenn Walker’s ICT renewal and strategic sourcing functions.

DSITIA is currently offering a salary of up to $185,000 on a two-year contract to attract someone with a “record of success as a leader in a large and complex organisation” to take over the new division as assistant director general.

The shared services division, along with assistant director general Mark Burnheim, has disappeared from the executive ranks.

DSITIA is also hunting for a new departmental CIO, eleven months after the departure of its last IT chief Tony Skippington. Andrew Mills became new Queensland Government CIO in January.

Skippington had been in the role since very early on in the department’s life, after it was first established by the incoming Newman government’s restructure of the Queensland public service in April 2012.

Paul Byrne has been acting in the role since April.

His replacement will be offered a total remuneration package of between $189,124 and $204,293, and will work inside yet another new internal services division under chief change and operations officer Evan Hill.

The CIO will focus on the IT needs of DSITIA’s roughly 3000 staff, as opposed to Mills who has whole-of-government strategic responsibility as government CIO.

DSITIA is currently undergoing some major IT transformations, in an effort to consolidate the mish-mash of systems it was landed with when it was formed from various government functions in 2012.

Under its $3.4 million ‘digital communications and collaboration’ project it will replace new email, collaboration and instant messaging tools, plus ageing Microsoft Office suites across the department.

It is also looking to replace finance and payroll systems with a new cloud solution.