Interim Chief Digital and Data Officer — Controls and Reliability

Hard choices when the platform is changing underneath

Recovering reliability is demanding on its own. Doing it while the product and platform model is also changing means every decision has two clocks: the one that measures service today and the one that measures the shape of the platform tomorrow. Several judgement calls will recur.

When a reliability fix and a platform change compete for the same engineers, which wins? There is no standing answer. A good leader decides case by case, on evidence, and records why, so that the pattern of decisions can be examined later.

When should a reliability control be built into the old model, knowing it will be replaced? Sometimes the answer is to accept the temporary cost; sometimes it is better to accelerate the new model. Either way, the choice must be explicit rather than drifting.

When does a data exception become a reliability risk? Data quality failures often surface as service failures weeks later, so the officer who owns both is placed to see the link.

Executive authority comes with the seat, reporting to the Technology Committee Chair. You will set the thresholds below which local leaders take digital and data decisions themselves, and choose the reliability and data evidence that any request for money, engineers or a control waiver must carry. Each inherited commitment keeps its resources only if you confirm it. You can stop a change that loads operational risk onto a team that never accepted it, and decline an investment case that cannot name its users, the systems it leans on or what an outage would cost. You also approve how the leadership is organised and how issues travel upward, and settle disagreements with the people running operations before money or engineers are committed.

Twenty-four months, two programmes, one standard

During the first ninety days, the scope of the reliability programme and its interfaces with the product and platform changes should be agreed with the Technology Committee Chair, so that neither programme surprises the other. Around month nine reliability controls should be running alongside the platform changes, with data and reliability exceptions owned and closed against agreed standards. By month 24 reliability and data controls should be embedded in the new product and platform model and reviewed by the committee on a settled cadence.

The leader suited to two clocks

During a geographic expansion you redrew who decides, how work is funded and how often operations are reviewed, and your baselines held when a technology committee and the engineers nearest the platform tested them. That experience sits in technology or digital platforms, in organisations earning $670 million or more, employing at least 1,100 people and active in three countries or more. The board weighs geographic expansion, digital transformation and joint ventures. Risk judgement at level 4 leads; data and AI governance, product delivery and architecture built for scale are each expected at level 3. Your accountability does not end when the board decides; it runs on through the unglamorous closing of exceptions.

Committee chair, Regional President, executives and board

Selection begins in week one with a remote conversation, held in confidence, with the Technology Committee Chair. By week three you are with the Regional President, working through how reliability and platform change would be balanced in practice. In week five comes an in-person meeting with executives who each lead a function, and week seven a discussion with the full board of directors. Our response follows in writing within 5 working days of each stage.