Interim Chief Information Officer — Integration

Deciding where engineering time goes

Of everything a technology function spends, engineering hours are usually the hardest to find and the least watched. Budgets are approved line by line, while engineering hours drift towards whoever shouts loudest or whatever broke last. The interim CIO holds executive authority to change that.

That authority covers the whole chain. You will build the allocation of decisions for engineering capacity, with the thresholds that local leadership retains, and select the evidence that every claim on funding, capacity or control must bring. You will determine which commitments continue, pause or close, and stop any request that slides cost or risk elsewhere without a person accountable for it. Investment will be refused where the case does not show who will use what is built, what it depends on, or the cost if it goes wrong. You will confirm who leads and the route issues take upward, and when the Technology Committee and the teams running services pull in different directions, you will settle it before engineering time or money is committed.

The hard part is rarely the rule; it is the conversation with the team whose work is paused. In a public-interest service, legacy systems often support obligations that cannot lapse, so the question is never simply old against new. It is which legacy demand is protecting a service and which is protecting a habit. A good CIO here can tell the difference, and can show the committee the evidence for each call.

Twelve months of capacity choices the committee can see

When the first ninety days end, the Technology Committee Chair and the CIO should have agreed allocation rules for engineering capacity and how technology decisions are divided. At month nine, capacity should have been reassigned under those rules, with paused work and the people responsible for it visible to the committee. By month 12 technology leadership and escalation should be settled, and the committee should be reviewing capacity choices on a regular cycle as part of its normal business.

An engineering leader who has restructured

You have led through restructuring and kept what the board was told anchored to what the systems and teams were actually showing. What you have led was never smaller than $300 million in revenue, 1,500 people and three countries, and you can separate an exception a market truly needs from variation protected only by history. Restructuring, digital transformation and professionalisation experience are examined, as are risk judgement at level 4 and data and AI governance, product delivery, and architecture at scale at level 3. You bring on successors while the operating model is being rebuilt, so that the new way of working survives your departure. You can explain to the Technology Committee Chair what remains unresolved without letting it become a reason to wait, and you act without needing unanimous consent from country leaders.

Four steps to the committee's decision

It begins with a one-to-one video call, in confidence, with the Technology Committee Chair during week one. The Regional President takes you through a practical session in week three. By week five you are in person with senior leaders who between them span every function, and the full board concludes things in the seventh week. Each step is followed by our written comments within five working days.