2018 CIO of the Year – Public Sector – Tara Mulrooney

PUBLIC SECTOR WINNER: TARA MULROONEY

The Energy Resources Conservation Board’s technology leader in 2011 and 2012, Tara Mulrooney, faced myriad custom-built systems, a dependency on expensive consultants, and a broken relationship between the business and the IT department. What did the 2018 CanadianCIO of the Year (Public Sector) do? She led bold initiatives that included retiring the mainframe, which had been viewed as a core piece of infrastructure previously, building out the in-house talent, and regaining the trust of the business.

With the responsibility of regulating the development of Alberta’s energy sector, Mulrooney recognized the need to have the IT department respond to business needs in an agile manner. She first delivered on that in 2012 with the Enterprise Delivery Team experiment, which paired IT professionals with senior regulatory personnel. The approach was a success, achieving the completion of 12 projects in 18 months.

Mulrooney became the Chief Technology Officer of the regulator shortly before it was renamed to the Alberta Energy Regulator, also inheriting the responsibilities and organizational structure of two government ministries. Once in this position, she set to work on creating the now renowned OneStop risk-based platform, a technology stack built on enterprise-class technologies that automated many processes and provided three user personas – citizen, staff, industry – to a global audience.

To read more about Mulrooney: ITWC