Treasury picks AGIMO's Alexander for CIO
Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO)'s online services branch assistant secretary Peter Alexander is set to become the new chief information officer (CIO) for the Department of Treasury from 6 June.
Peter Alexander speaking at the CeBIT Gov 2.0 forum in Canberra (Credit: CeBIT)
Alexander takes over the role from Alaine King, who stepped down from the position she held for three years in January to take on the role of general manager of Medicare Applications with Medicare Australia. Alexander confirmed that he would be taking on the role after 7.5 years with AGIMO in an interview with ZDNet Australia this afternoon.
"I've been in this whole-of-government IT space for a while, and moving to Treasury in the CIO role, I am really looking forward to it," he said. "It's looking at some different skills and different requirements being a CIO. I'm really looking forward to new and different challenges."
During his time at AGIMO, Alexander was responsible for the web policy management, government 2.0, government collaboration, online publishing and the Australia.gov.au website. Alexander said that he hoped this experience could be brought over to the CIO role.
"There will be great opportunities for me to bring what I've learnt at AGIMO, the type of things I've done and the way I operate and the behaviours I exhibit I will take with me.
"Taking [Australia.gov.au] from a pretty important website to a really important website with a huge user base has been really important to me. But also the Gov 2.0 work and working on the Gov 2.0 Taskforce and getting that report delivered and the subsequent actions have been a real highlight for me," he said.
Alexander also paid tribute to his AGIMO colleagues.
"Great leadership through a number of leaders that we've had here. Most notably of course [Ann Steward, AGIMO CIO], who has just been excellent and a real supporter of our staff and innovation. And then Patrick Callioni [AGIMO division Manager], and John Sheridan [AGIMO first assistant secretary], who have been excellent and have taught me unbelievable amounts," he said.
"I will miss AGIMO terribly, it's a great place to work and I've learned huge amounts here and made a good contribution, I hope. Hopefully I can take that to Treasury and do the same."
The role had been advertised for pay between $173,667 and $201,839.
Alexander is set to speak at the CeBIT information technology expo in Sydney next week about AGIMO's work with the "tell us once" citizen services, that is examining the possibility of allowing citizens to update their details via Australia.gov.au and have that information carry to all government departments.