Courts new CIO faces 'interesting' times

The Department for Courts is advertising for a chief information officer to replace IT manager David Huggins when he comes to the end of his contract on June 28.

The Department for Courts is advertising for a chief information officer to replace IT manager David Huggins when he comes to the end of his contract on June 28.

The CIO position will have the same reporting lines as the IT manager post, says general manager corporate services Neil Wanden, but will have “a more strategic focus”.

There has previously been “no single person responsible for IT strategy” complementing Huggins’s largely operational role, Wanden says. The wider perspective, as well as more closely coordinating strategic matters, will make the job offer “more interesting” for applicants, he says.

Courts’ IT function will probably not be short of interest in its own right, possibly in the sense of the Chinese curse; the department is in the midst of a complex case management development, which several sources suggest is not going well. It is attempting to chart a course from a system currently being built in Sybase PowerBuilder to an eventual browser-based Java implementation.

Spokesman Barry Ebert denies reports of delays, saying “it’s all rolling along very nicely” (see Courts close-mouthed on case management progress). He declines any further information until the project has progressed further.

Applications were scheduled to close last Friday.