Better at Beca

CIO Robin Johansen talks about technology, past present and future.

What are the biggest challenges for CIOs?

Managing in a time of financial stringency, meeting rapidly changing needs, recruiting and retaining good staff, and maintaining currency of knowledge across a very broad spectrum of topics.

Who is in charge of the IT budget – the CIO or the CFO?

The CIO must be in charge of the IT budget, but no man is an island and IT is just a part of the business. The IT budget must be evolved and managed in concert with what is happening to the business as a whole – something that is relatively easy to achieve when one works in an employee-owned business and holds shares.

What are the traits needed to be a CIO?

The CIO must be a strategist, mentor, cheerleader, change manager, negotiator, orator, salesperson, listener, and an eternal student!

What is the most difficult aspect of ICT for your company?

Our organisation is geographically dispersed and collaborative in nature, which means that we are very demanding in terms of our data communications. Having offices in China, Singapore, Indonesia, UK, Australia and New Zealand, without the ability to manage data communications from end to end, makes life difficult. We use videoconferencing relatively intensively as an aid to internal collaboration and it doesn’t require any genius to detect network deficiencies when communicating in this way between Auckland and Beijing!

In general, what do you think is the most pressing ICT issue at present?

The transition to IPv6 requires attention now. There is not a huge amount of time to prepare and there is real potential that we will face a skills shortage as we make the transition.

Is the government doing enough for ICT?

The government has been absolutely clear about its commitment to improving our broadband infrastructure and this is clearly needed. Progress has been slower than originally forecast and one hopes that this is symptomatic of moving with care rather than running out of steam.

Mobile termination rates and roaming costs for mobiles may yet require government intervention.

Is New Zealand behind the rest of the world in private sector ICT infrastructure?

Other than the limitations imposed by current broadband offerings and the small size of our market, which means it has little depth, we are not that far behind the world.

What about public sector ICT infrastructure?

There is considerable focus on improving public sector IT infrastructure at present – notably in the health sector.  I don’t think that the public ICT infrastructure is that far off the pace either, but it is good to see a commitment to continuous improvement.

What is the most exciting thing happening in ICT now?

The rapid evolution of e-books and a plethora of ‘readers’.

Do you believe in the cloud computing hype?

Cloud computing is here and is not about to go away. My attention is drawn to the issues of data security, avoiding the creation of data silos, and business continuity/disaster recovery for a larger enterprise. The big question is how to embrace this change without, on the one hand, endangering the business while, on the other hand, remaining agile enough so that cloud-based feral computing doesn’t arise out of frustration that IT can’t move quickly enough to meet the needs and aspirations of the business.

If you could have one ICT item to make your business run smoothly, what would it be?

I’d want an MPLS network connecting all of our offices.

Did you always want to work in IT?

No. I started out as a radio technician before going on to do an electrical engineering degree with the focus on ‘light electrical’ or electronics. I grew up at the tail end of the vacuum tube era and with the romance of shortwave radio. In those far-off days it was almost impossible to buy anything other than army surplus radio equipment and whilst the remarkable old ZC-1 radio worked wonders when ‘dealt to’, it was an era where you either built the equipment yourself or went without.

This was long before the advent of Dick Smith or Jaycar kitsets, when one could get a dual benefit from a radio: listening to a broadcast and simultaneously reading by the light emanating from the vacuum tubes!

I was drawn into the computing realm at the dawn of the microprocessor era, which was very exciting, and when eight-bit microprocessors constrained memory to the point that one had to write code in assembly language in order to get the functionality within the available space!

These days my long-distance communication is largely carried out by videoconferencing, Unified Communications or Skype, and the challenge of dealing with ionospheric conditions and fading is a distant memory.

If you didn’t work in IT, what would you be doing?

I would probably be involved in youth work somewhere. Three years ago I joined a group called Big Buddy, providing mentoring for fatherless boys, and this has been both fulfilling and a revelation regarding the plight that too many of our boys and young men face.