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2005 Canberra Branch Conference
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Projects, Portfolios and Governance in a Virtual World: The Dilemma for Government IT Management
Mr Rob Thomsett, The Thomsett Company
Biography:
Rob joined computing in 1968 and has been consulting and educating in the area of project management, teams and quality since 1974. In 1981, Rob was contracted by YOURDON Inc. in New York to present seminars in the US and UK based on his book People and Project Management published by YOURDON Press.
Rob is also a member of the Editorial Board of the prestigious Cutter Journal with Ed Yourdon, Tom DeMarco, Bill Curtis, Capers Jones, Kent Beck and other leading US information system experts. His second book, Third Wave Project Management was published in 1991.
In 1994, he developed the Accreditation Programme for Project Management for the Australian Computer Society. Rob was honoured as the Australian Computer Society Lecturer of the Year in 1989/90.
In 2001, he was recognised for his outstanding effort in education of business professionals by his peers and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society. He is also on the Industry Advisory Board of the I.E.E.E., a member of the Faculty of CC Pace Learning Institute in Washington and the Strategic Advisory Panel for the University of Sydney’s Graduate Project Management Program with experts such as Sandy Hollway, Sydney Olympics and Peter Watson, CEO, Transfield.
His latest book is Radical Project Management published by Prentice-Hall, US in 2002. His client base includes some of the leading commercial (Colonial State, Commonwealth Bank, Capital One, etc) and government/R & D organisations (Los Alamos National Labs, Mitre Corp, CSIRO, DIMIA) in the US and Australia.
Topic synopsis
As the rate of change in government increases driven by globalisation, outsourcing, demands for efficiency and responsiveness, the pressure on IT within the government sector has created a series of dilemmas for both IT and government executives.
These include:
- the need for government IT to respond quickly yet conform to increasing security and reporting regimes;
- the need to deliver more complex projects within an increasing dependence on external consultants and organisations;
- the requirement to deliver effective outputs and outcomes while building partnerships with clients and stakeholders; and
- the requirement to deliver more projects with fewer resources and lower budgets.
These dilemmas raise serious questions for Government CIO’s, IT people and senior executives. Questions that go to the heart of the matter … how can IT respond to these challenges without senior executive ownership and accountability?
In this session, Rob will explore and present some solutions to these dilemmas and develop a series of strategies for project managers to engage senior management in effectively managing complex portfolios of projects.
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Last updated: 8 November 2005