SA government begins hunt for new CIO

The South Australian government has started recruiting for a new chief information officer, seven months after the departure of long-serving IT lead Dr Eva Balan-Vnuk to SA Power Networks.

The Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF) is seeking a permanent CIO to lead the state’s “digital, cyber security and technology agenda”, creating a new government-wide strategy and leading service delivery.

The appointment comes in the final year of South Australia’s ICT, Cyber Security and Digital Government Strategy 2020–2025.

SA government CISO Will Luker has held the acting CIO position since Balan-Vnuk's exit in February, leading a team of 140 full-time people.

A spokesperson for the DFT told iTnews that Luker’s role was backfilled during the interim period, so it was not functioning as a merged role.

The incoming CIO will head the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), which was moved from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet (DPC) to DTF as part of a machinery of government change on July 1 2024.

The move brought together SA's IT delivery - spanning cloud services, cyber security, infrastructure and internal operations - and its digital program unit, which handles the goverment's website footprint and iApply workflow solution [pdf].

In its last budget, SA tabled $75 million over four years to provide increased and ongoing investment in digital modernisation and cyber security in government.

In addition, it will invest $28 million over four years to establish an ‘Office for AI’ as part of an initiative to develop artificial intelligence pilots for use in the state government.