April - 20198GOVERNMENT CIO OUTLOOKIN MYOPINIONs a state owned, national infrastructure and services business, KiwiRail has 150 proud years of asset engineering and investment. Generations have built a critical national transport network through hard labour, and a passion for making our country succeed. We have seen the organisation be transferred, transformed, recreated and reimagined, yet the stronger connections we deliver for communities, for business, for exporters and commuters across New Zealand has remained constant. Similarly, how we work ­ the way we lay our track, repair our wagons, and move customers and their freight ­ has fundamentally remained stable. But, like every industry disrupted by technology, that is changing. Exponential increases in processing power and storage, products emerging that blend physical and digital data into new information and services, the seemingly infinite capabilities of cloud computing - we are seeing a massive opportunity to gain insight into our business, and make a wholesale change in how we run and manage our operations. For many years, particularly in our organisation which hasn't traditionally been high tech, we have always seen "IT" as separate and distinct from "the business. IT looked after providing computers and phones, making sure business software was working effectively and well managed, delivering "IT projects" and maintaining security of information and services. As our business looks for ways to leverage technologies embedded within their operational assets to provide a commercial advantage, the traditional IT model and scope must be reconsidered. How do we best support the emergence of this "Operational Technology" (OT) domain? Is it productive, or even possible, to draw a line between IT and the business in a world where OT becomes the norm? Over the last few years, KiwiRail's digital transformation has taken us from a wholly insourced, large IT department focussed on technical solutions and support, through to a contemporary, mixed source, digital first team. We have established cross functional product teams in partnership with the business, managing integrated backlogs, rapid prototyping and lifting the pace of our delivery. This has got us to the first table ­ one we sit at alongside our business, partnering on improving the services we provide our customers and developing software based solutions to business issues.The other table, the engineering operations table, has been a little more elusive. OT products are not new in our business, and have been in use for some time.These are tools our engineers Reassessing Where the Value Lies for an Organisation Penelope Rae, CIO, KiwiRailByA
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