commentary You'd have to be insane or just incredibly ambitious to want the job of chief information officer of the Australian Department of Defence.
That's the conclusion your writer reached after reading a
report released late last week by Defence Minister Brendan Nelson
into his department's organisational efficiency and
effectiveness.
The Defence Management Review -- available online -- devoted an entire chapter of its 118 pages to the department's ICT systems.
The news was not good for Defence's chief information officer group -- the approximately 1,100 hardy souls charged with keeping the department's increasingly creaky technology operation floating.
"The primary output of any ICT organisation is to maintain basic ICT services and to respond proactively to customer needs. Defence ICT does not appear to be meeting these requirements, at least as far as basic ICT services and support of business systems is concerned," the review stated.
And that wasn't the worst of it.
"Information management systems represent an oxymoron: they do not have robust information, and they do not manage it," commented one wag quoted in the review.
The report painted a picture of an organisation that was successfully meeting its wartime obligations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations, but that had a number of management problems back home.
The situation is made worse for the CIO group by the resignation last month of its commander in chief, Air Vice Marshal and CIO John Monaghan.
Perhaps Monaghan saw the report coming and got out early. And who could blame him? The CIO has been on deck since late 2004, when he stepped up from a previous role as head of Defence's aerospace systems division.
Monaghan must have copped a lot of flak in that time -- particularly if Defence's ICT operation was only meeting some 10-15 percent of internal demand for its services, as last week's report claimed.
The problem for Defence now is how to replace Monaghan with a worthy successor that can address the department's technology shortcomings.
Last week's review noted the future CIO "will need to be a person with strong leadership and influencing skills steeped in information management discipline and with experience in transforming significant IT organisations".
"It is unlikely that such a person will be found within Defence," it baldly concluded.
However, the problem with external candidates is that they will be perfectly aware of the perils of stepping into Monaghan's shoes at a time when the department is undergoing substantive change.
Then there's the pay situation. Monaghan was paid as a two-star Air Vice Marshal, a position equivalent in remuneration to the Australian Public Service's SES Level 2 scale. The review recommended the new CIO get an immediate bump to the three-star level, in order to boost the priority and prominence of Defence's technology function.
The three-star rank entails a Rear Admiral, Lieutenant General or Air Marshal position and comes with a salary between AU$158,566 and AU$204,607.
While still hefty, your writer's opinion is that the pay rates on offer at Defence won't be attractive to top-level IT executives from the private sector.
For example, the last reported remuneration of St George Bank's long-time CIO John Loebenstein -- who will retire in June -- was AU$1.291 million. A substantial portion of that sum was incentive payments based on goals reached.
Defence will need to work hard to attract a top-level CIO to drive strategic ICT change in a department that last week's review described as "the most complex portfolio in government, and one of the most complex organisations in the country".
The Department of Defence's CIO position -- career breaker or career maker? Post your thoughts below this article or drop me a line directly at renai.lemay@zdnet.com.au.
One wonders whether the root cause of Defence's issues relate to the heavy outsourcing strategy foistered on it over a decade ago by bean counters in the Department of Finance. From the report "RECOMMENDATION 46. Until Defence understands its business processes and associated benchmarks and costs, it is not appropriate to consider outsourcing additional ICT services." Does Defence have sufficient ICT competency left within its ranks to regain control of what has been recognised in the same report as a very important strategic asset - and hence deserve 'its own chapter'. Accountants usually are a little slow to realise the intrinsic benefits of any strategic asset until it finally shows up in the balance sheet, a balanced score card, or a crisis report. Maybe the new CIO may be given more freedom to back source or in source to achieve strategic alignment, more flexible tactical control, better SLAs for its customers, timely information for the Minister & Government, and more value for money for the taxpayer.