No Screw-Ups Allowed

As Steward draws on her lifetime of public service and project management experience to advance her mission of helping the government simplify and improve the delivery of government services to the community, she acknowledges that "ongoing reform of government back-office operations and organizational structures" is "perhaps the greatest challenge for all governments".

Steward took over as federal CIO and general manager of the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) from former CIO John Grant after working with former Centrelink CIO Jane Treadwell (now Victoria's CIO) in the role of general manager, enterprise capability, in Centrelink's Business Transformation Group. There she presided over the $312 million Project Refresh technology update.

That work was informed by the four years she spent - from July 1998 until September 2002 - as director e-Government in the UK's Cabinet Office, devising detailed policies, strategies and related funding for central and local government initiatives involving central departments and agencies, local government associations and the local authorities. Much of her time in the UK was spent completing and implementing enhanced governance arrangements to apply across the UK public sector in support of the government's online program.

Steward has another big tick against her resume: Her more than 20 years' public sector experience in Australia and the UK, covering policy and operational leadership responsibilities, have given her extensive senior level contacts across the public sector worldwide, and she has led or participated in key G8 and OECD programs driving change in the application of IT for business transformation and integrated electronic service delivery.

"I've been fortunate in being able to have not only the policy experience but the line administration and technology implementation experience, so I think those three elements coupled together certainly provide me with a good opportunity to be able to work with my colleagues across government, and in particular within my office here, in taking forward the government's agenda," she tells CIO magazine.

Observers took the announcement of Steward's appointment in June as a signal the Howard government was finally ready to move ahead with its plans for electronic service delivery, after more than a year of inaction following the April 2004 launch of Connecting Government: Whole-of-Government Responses to Australia's Priority Challenges. That report, prepared by public service mandarin Peter Shergold, was intended to offer a blueprint for improving and integrating service delivery while cutting costs in the public service. Announcing Steward's appointment, Special Minister of State Eric Abetz conceded the introduction of the program had been frustrated by delays in appointing a permanent CIO.

He also said while individual departments like Centrelink and the Tax Office had made good progress on developing e-service platforms, Steward's top priority would be better coordination of departments. Noting that the federal government spends $5 billion a year on information technology, of which about $1 billion goes to new projects, Senator Abetz said: "If we can get a good strategic approach in place, we might be able to save a few hundred million dollars here and there".

He foreshadowed a dramatic shake-up of internal IT strategy, with plans to implement an ambitious reform program by the end of the year that will embrace identity management, tougher contracts for vendors, better real-time notification of services and an IT skills program, among other initiatives. Senator Abetz said the new initiative set "ambitious goals" for the bureaucracy that acknowledged that ultimately, e-government is about reforming government to best serve its citizens.

The overriding goal is to bring public sector IT into line with the government's aggressive fourth-term agenda. In pursuit of that agenda senior ministers in the Howard government have flagged a determination to ensure upcoming major policy initiatives in industrial relations (IR), health and welfare are not frustrated by siloed IT infrastructure or uncooperative public servants. In April, Human Services Minister Joe Hockey pledged to sack public servants responsible for IT failures.

Hockey also explicitly warned government CIOs and IT managers that embarrassing blowouts and botched implementations will be ruthlessly penalized, pointing as an example to the combined Centrelink and Department of Family and Community Services' $64 million transactional software development write-off known as "Edge". He had earlier effectively sacked the boards of both Centrelink and the Health Insurance Commission to take direct control of their unwieldy bureaucracies.

Yet in announcing Steward's appointment, Senator Abetz conceded she would have no power to force departments to follow recommendations from AGIMO, while insisting the task she was being given was not impossible. He said Steward would influence departments by encouraging policy rather than mandating it, while returning AGIMO to the Department of Finance - with its mandate to scrutinize the financing of technology projects - would give her some leverage.