Service NSW CIO departs for Suncorp

Service NSW’s chief information officer Ben McMullen has left the central service delivery agency to take up a new position at Suncorp.

Ben McMullen

A spokesperson confirmed McMullen had “chosen to move on to pursue other opportunities” after five years at the agency.

He moves to the role of executive manager of Suncorp's new strategic capability marketplace.

McMullen has spent just over a year transforming and stabilising Service NSW's technology environment as CIO.

He also spent four years as the agency’s technology architecture and risk management director, where he shifted the IT infrastructure to a multi-vendor hybrid cloud environment.

Prior to joining Service NSW, he spent a number of years at consultancy firm Avanade and Accenture.

The agency is now looking for a new CIO to lead its product and digital team “in an agile and lean culture”.

The new executive will report to the agency’s chief digital and product officer – a role that was created following changes to the agency’s executive structure in late 2017.

Those changes saw the state’s former digital tsar Daman Rees become the permanent head of Services NSW.

Several month later the agency poached NSW Department of Industry CIO Ian Jansen to become its chief digital and product officer.

Jansen holds responsibility for Service NSW’s core digital offerings, including the MyService NSW account, website and mobile app, digital forms and transactions and the payment services platform.

However the incoming CIO will still operate “with a high level of autonomy” and will be “fully accountable for the quality, integrity and validity of the advice provided and work performed”.

The agency was recently forced to upgrade its IT infrastructure after experiencing systems issues due to the popularity of the state's compulsory third party (CTP) insurance 'green slip' refund in March.