HealthAlliance, the shared service formed by the Northern district health boards for their non-clinical services, is New Zealand’s largest IT user organisation in this year’s MIS100.
The organisation, formed in March this year, has a total of 18,328 screens and a 252-member IT shop. HealthAlliance now provides services to more than 26,000 users across the four Northern Region DHBs.
Its emergence as the number one organisation is a reflection of how the mergers in the public sector and private sector impacted this year’s list, which is based on screen numbers, staff and turnover.
Fletcher Building and Mainfreight, two enterprises on the acquisition path, have higher rankings this year. Another newcomer to the list, Auckland Council, which resulted from eight merged councils, is ranked number 11.
Meanwhile, organisational restructuring has led to vastly different effects on the CIO role – some have opted to disestablish the role and split it into two or moved the reporting line. In some organisations, like TelstraClear, this has led to the creation of a more strategic role for CIOs with broader responsibilities, often beyond ICT.
This year, nearly a third of the heads of ICT in the 100 organisations are new or are from organisations that are new to MIS100. Business continuity, meanwhile, became a critical priority as systems, processes and infrastructure were tested by the series of natural disasters that hit this country and Australia.
ICT teams are working on a number of projects kept on hold during the economic slowdown, but with static or minimum increases in budgets and the same or fewer staff.
Meanwhile, consumer and cloud-based technologies are entrenching themselves in the workplace, along with the rise of a more tech savvy staff. This year, CIOs discuss how they are developing their ‘bring your own’ technology programmes, and working on the policies for employees accessing the office systems using their personal devices. This issue extends to their customers and partners as the latter are using an increasing broad range of devices such as smartphones and iPads, and want – and expect – to connect with the organisations this way.
Social media has definitely moved up the radar. Last year, CIOs of tertiary institutions with younger and or tech-savvy users talked about using social media. This year, organisations such as the IRD and ASB Bank are among the active users. IRD is using Facebook to keep people informed following the February earthquake in Christchurch, while ASB says it was the first bank in the world to open a branch on Facebook.
For a copy of the MIS report visit www.cio.co.nz.