Murray-Darling Basin Authority hunts for new CIO

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MBDA) is on the hunt for a new chief information officer to replace incumbent Rod Barlow who will retire.  

The CIO oversees MBDA’s ICT and data branch, which is housed within its business services portfolio headed by the Commonwealth agency’s chief operating officer Annette Blyton.

Blyton told iTnews that one of the branch’s core responsibilities was ensuring that MBDA’s “river operators, policy developers, hydrological modellers, and ecologists” have “reliable, secure, and innovative ICT to access and analyse information and data to make decisions.”

The statutory agency - responsible for the basin’s sustainability and ensuring that state government agencies’ water management programs are integrated - is planning a transition period before Barlow’s replacement takes the reins, iTnews understands. 

“The chief information officer takes a pivotal role in building ICT platform capability from concept to inception in support of critical work such as the integrated modelling uplift project,” Blyton said. 

MDBA’s integrated modelling uplift project [pdf] is aimed at boosting collaborative water management among the basin’s stakeholders by making modelling more standardised and transparent. 

Blyton added that “the CIO role is also an essential capability driver, ensuring MDBA staff have innovative platforms and frameworks, tools, and the cultural and digital awareness to govern, interrogate and share data.”

According to a recruitment post, the CIO is also responsible for MDBA’s cyber security posture.

Barlow has spent the past 30 years of his career in senior ICT roles in the Commonwealth and Victorian Government. 

He has been with the MBDA for the last five years. Before that, he worked at Victoria’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water as its director of business transformation for one year. 

He has held other ICT director roles at the Department of the Environment and the Australian Research Council.