Steane Walsh

Appointed to transform a technology function crippled by accumulated legacy debt, fragmented systems and a high cost-to-serve — with a mandate to modernise platforms and team capabilities to drive operational efficiency and lift the digital experience for 221, 000 customers. Full executive accountability for Digital & Technology across one of Australia’s largest critical infrastructure utilities, operating 24x7 across water treatment, distribution and wastewater infrastructure. Team of 66 across 7 specialist functions, $32M annual budget, $60M 5-year transformation program.

Operating Model Design — Diagnosed a defaulted matrix structure and executed a pivot to a Spotify-inspired model — seven business-aligned chapters with agile delivery squads, outsourcing of non-core services and large-scale workforce redesign completed in 12 months with sustained engagement with HR and unions. Result: ticket resolution 100%, SLO 92%, CSAT 4.5/5, project throughput +200%, attrition 5%.

Digital Transformation — Designed and executive-sponsored the $60M Digital Enablement Program — a board-endorsed, 5-year transformation integrating cloud foundations, enterprise data governance, asset management modernisation, customer self-service and a comprehensive cyber uplift into a single phased roadmap tied directly to TasWater’s top-five enterprise priorities. Also drove NIST cyber score improvement from 2.2 to 2.66.

Strategy & Architecture — Established TasWater’s architecture and strategy function — implementing a TOGAF-based agile enterprise architecture framework to standardise a fragmented digital ecosystem, define long-term technology strategy and roadmaps, and eliminate technology sprawl. Delivered $1M reduction in software spend within the first year.

Business & Customer Enablement — Sponsored and led the implementation of TasWater's customer self-service and CRM platform — digitalising customer billing, payments and service requests across a base of 221, 000 connections, achieving 30% customer digital adoption within six months of launch. Also sponsored the upgrade of the enterprise finance platform, replacing legacy systems with a modern cloud-based solution improving financial reporting, procurement and operational visibility across the organisation.

Platform Modernisation — Leading the modernisation of TasWater's Maximo asset management system — replatforming to cloud to address technical obsolescence, redesigning asset hierarchies and workflow practices to improve maintenance data capture and optimise asset maintenance outcomes across a $2.3B infrastructure base.

Cyber Security — Sponsoring and leading a comprehensive cyber security uplift programme targeting NIST maturity above 3.0 — from a baseline of 2.2 to 2.66 achieved within the first year. The programme spans corporate and OT environments and encompasses 24x7 SOC monitoring, identity and access management modernisation, multi-factor authentication, network segmentation, mobile device management and incident response capability — establishing a security posture commensurate with critical infrastructure obligations.

AI & Innovation — Championed Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment across the enterprise and progressed an agentic AI proof of concept to augment critical water treatment and supply operations — piloting autonomous monitoring and decision-support to reduce manual intervention and improve operational outcomes.

Data & Analytics — Designed and sponsored TasWater's $7.2M, 3-year Data Governance and Analytics Program — establishing federated data governance frameworks based on DMBOK, and delivering a modern Azure Databricks and Azure Data Lake architecture with integrated AI capabilities. The program is designed to dramatically lift data quality, governance maturity and analytics capability across the organisation, creating the foundation for advanced analytics and AI-driven decision-making.

Joined as CIO and full member of the Executive Leadership Team of Australia’s only Secret and Top Secret accredited sovereign cloud provider — with a mandate extending well beyond technology. Owned the product roadmap and built the agile engineering teams to rapidly bring new sovereign cloud products to market, directly contributing to the commercial strategy, pricing and market differentiation that underpinned one of Australia’s largest cloud contract wins with Defence. Contributed across company strategy, commercial direction, profitability, organisational design and capability development, while maintaining 24x7x365 availability across defence agencies, air traffic control and critical government clients.

Operating Model Design — Restructured the technology organisation into a Spotify-inspired chapters and squads model, brought in new operational leadership, and established ITIL V4 frameworks for change, incident and problem management — turning around a function in crisis into one achieving 100% system availability and 95% SLOs across air traffic control, defence systems and other critical government infrastructure requiring 24x7x365 reliability.

Platform Modernisation — Built Australia's only Secret and Top Secret accredited sovereign cloud — underpinned by a deliberate open source architecture strategy that structurally reduced cost of goods, created a compelling price-to-performance advantage over proprietary competitors, and directly enabled a successful bid on an $850M defence contract.

Workforce Strategy — Designed and executed a geographically dispersed workforce strategy — building engineering teams across Australia, Vietnam and the Philippines to access specialist talent, control costs and improve profitability. Established the QA function from scratch, reducing production defects by 30% and increasing deployment speed by 40%.

Commercial Strategy — Drove the product roadmap through strategic global vendor partnerships — negotiating direct deals with Intel, NVIDIA, Dell and Supermicro to reduce cost of goods and improve margins, and establishing software alliances with Oracle, Veeam and others to expand platform and SaaS capabilities — directly contributing to improved profitability and market penetration.

Agile Product Delivery — Built and led agile-based product and engineering teams in a fast-moving executive environment — rapidly developing new sovereign cloud product offerings to market while maintaining the reliability obligations of critical government infrastructure. This delivery model directly underpinned Vault Cloud’s successful bid on one of Australia’s largest cloud contracts with Defence.

Appointed to lead the RBA’s central data engineering and operations function — the critical platform underpinning economic analysis, monetary policy, financial markets and financial stability across the Bank. Accountable for data platform operations, engineering delivery and a portfolio of enterprise data programs, with significant business partnering across all major divisions to prioritise investment and unblock delivery in one of Australia’s most analytically demanding organisations.

Platform Modernisation — Led the modernisation of the RBA's data platform — replacing legacy data warehousing infrastructure with a fit-for-purpose cloud data lake and enterprise data governance tooling, improving data quality, security, visibility and self-service capability for the Bank’s economists, analysts and decision-makers. Reduced data onboarding times by 30% and materially expanded analytical productivity across the organisation.

Effectively the Chief Operating Officer of the RBA’s Financial Markets Group — the team at the centre of Australia’s monetary policy implementation and the institutional banking and payments system. The group manages open market operations that inject and withdraw liquidity across the Exchange Settlement Accounts of approximately 100 financial institutions, directly governing how banks settle payment obligations across Australia’s economy — including the New Payments Platform (NPP) and RITS real-time gross settlement infrastructure. Full accountability for technology strategy, trading operations support, market data, analytics, project delivery and risk across a $60M budget and an integrated team of 100. Held a direct seat alongside senior economists and trading leadership, shaping both business and technology strategy at the heart of Australia’s financial system.

Digital Transformation — Restructured the group — introducing product ownership, agile scrum methodologies, automation and DevOps practices to build teams capable of rapidly responding to evolving market conditions and changes in the technology landscape. Consolidated analytics into a central service and embedded agile delivery to support the rapid pace demanded by live trading operations. Drove a $50M technology modernisation agenda that reduced time-to-market for new trading capabilities from months to days — including developing new platforms to interface directly with the Bank’s banking and payments divisions, and critical in an environment where same-day response to market conditions is operationally essential.

Digital Market Operations - Automated the RBA's daily open market operations — replacing a manual bilateral cash negotiation process with a purpose-built automated platform, fundamentally modernising how the Bank executes $7billion in daily liquidity management across Australia's financial system.

Programme & Project Management — Rescued a $14M forecasting system upgrade at risk of derailing the broader $240M core banking programme — securing additional resources, restructuring the team and driving delivery on time alongside the mainframe decommissioning.

Appointed to rescue the Bank’s Business Intelligence platform — resolving critical vendor failures and interoperability issues within two months, onboarding the first BAU datasets and securing managed services in six weeks against a typical 12-month procurement cycle. Promoted to Senior Manager Financial Markets Group on the strength of this turnaround.

IT delivery leadership role embedded within the Financial Markets Group during a period of significant transformation in Australia’s payments infrastructure — including the build and launch of the New Payments Platform (NPP) and the Fast Settlement Service (FSS). Accountable for 24/7 availability of the Bank’s economy-critical trading platform, interfacing directly with the banking and payments divisions. Managed a $10M project portfolio, delivered a $6.8M treasury platform upgrade to OpenLink Findur, drove bank-wide SDLC modernisation, and led a bank-wide innovation program producing 30 ideas of which three received Executive Committee funding.

Led the design of the RBA’s Securitisation System — a national-scale financial data platform ingesting granular loan-level data across every repo-eligible RMBS, CMBS and ABS submitted by Australia’s major banks, managing collateral underpinning $200B+ in securities and forming a critical pillar of Australia’s post-GFC transparency reforms. Defined the ISM-aligned cybersecurity architecture and led vendor engagement for one of the Bank’s first outsourced technology solutions.

Key advisor to the CIO of a $240M global renewable energy enterprise with wind and solar assets across multiple countries. Defined a five-year transformation roadmap, established TOGAF-aligned architecture governance, led cloud migration and reduced end-user issues by 80%. As Head of PMO and C-level IT Steering Committee member, repositioned IT from cost centre to revenue-generating function. Led the architecture and implementation strategy for a Microsoft Dynamics ERP deployment — consolidating financial management, supply chain and asset operations across a globally distributed enterprise spanning multiple countries.