ESB CIO Staff Conference

The annual ESB Chief Information Officer (CIO) staff conference took place in the Davenport Hotel on Monday and Tuesday November 12th and 13th, with more than 400 employees present over the two days.

The key theme of the day was the CIO Business Plan for 2008, which was presented by Peter O’Shea, CIO, and Michael Fox, IT & Telecom Services Manager.

Peter outlined the highlights of 2007 from a financial, people/service and project deliverables prospective. He made particular reference to our excellent safety record to date and reminded staff to be extra vigilant in the coming months when seasonal changes pose more risks to safety. He also highlighted the huge improvements and efforts that have been introduced to the CIO Service Centre.

• The All-Island Electricity Market
• The Networks IT Applications Programme (NITA)
• ESBIE Billing
• The Payroll and Human Resources (PHR) system
• Financial Consolidation
• The Infrastructure Consolidation & Centralisation Project (ICCP)
• Data Centre
• The Operations Management System (OMS)
• IT Strategy
• Telecoms & WAN Strategy

Peter specifically mentioned the success of ESB Telecoms Ltd in 2007, which is now the leading independent provider of telecommunications infrastructure and network services in Ireland and he recognised the contributions made by Telecom Services personnel in this success.

Looking forward to 2008, Peter set out the IT Strategy for ESB, which was developed in 2007 in conjunction with all business units. He also described the four challenges facing both the CIO Organisation and ESB in general:

• Getting Value from IT
• Delivering to Customer Needs
• Understanding and Improving “How We Do Our Business”
• Building on the impressive ESB Telecom Growth

From the perspective of service cost, a major initiative to assess and improve current performance will get underway in December 2008 and this will be headed up by John Cunningham. In addition, the CIO Organisation will establish a Benefits Management Process with the Business Units to ensure that ESB is maximising the value of its considerable IT expenditure.

Michael Fox set out the key deliverables in each of the IT and Telecom service areas. He also warmly applauded the considerable work undertaken and delivered in 2007 and commended the working groups on their deliberations.

The CIO organisation was delighted to welcome Executive Director, Brid Horan to the conference. Brid reflected on the achievements of the year and the growing dependence which ESB has on IT and Telecommunications to undertake its work.

Brid picked up on a comment made by a number of earlier speakers that, “what gets measured get managed” and observed that “what gets measured also gets appreciated”. She fully supported the CIO Organisation’s performance assessment and improvement process as a means of delivering a better performance and a better set of performance and cost metrics which will illustrate the value of IT and Telecoms within ESB.

To encourage broader discussions, this year the event included presentations from three working groups which were formed prior to the event to discuss a number of key topics within the CIO. The three topics presented were:

• Personal Development
• Silos in the Workplace
• Does IT provide good value to ESB

The conference also gave everyone involved a chance to renew acquaintances, and meet new members of staff. Following the conference staff have given feedback on the event. A lot of positive and constructive comments have been received, which will be used in the planning and organisation of future such events.