A Day in the Life of a CIO: Russell Morris, CIO, APA

A long-standing irritation for Russell Morris, CIO at Australian energy infrastructure organisation, APA, is when vendors don’t live up to their promises or they “oversell” their offerings.

“I remember once a vendor [delivered] a fantastic presentation with some bold commitments. When the time came to sign the contract, I asked them to, in effect, staple these commitments to the contract as a binding artefact but they just wouldn’t commit to it.”

“That probably told me all that I needed to know about the integrity of that vendor. Needless to say, we didn’t progress with them,” he tells ADAPT.

The most rewarding interactions, says Morris, occur when his team invites a few vendors to participate in an activity like a hackathon where problems can be solved as a group.

The days of “one system doing everything” are over and vendors that can work in lockstep with each other to hack around…