Michael Cooke

Head of ICT Projects

I am a senior executive with over 20 years’ experience in ICT, and a proven ability to lead diverse teams and provide strategic advice at a board level. Throughout my career I have been at the heart of positive change, transformation, and turning around deeply dysfunctional teams and failing businesses. I am used to working within a tightly regulated environment, whilst simultaneously managing digital disruption, innovation and transforming. My career is about building outcomes based cultures; and ICT teams to meet these challenges within very complex, fast, high-stakes and diverse large environments. Working for Brisbane City Council these 10+ years, has both broadened and deepened my understanding of what it takes to deliver exceptional customer service to the community. Being the largest local authority in Australia, $3.2B annual budget, it has also expanded my understanding of platforms, analytics, project management, organisational change management; and exposed me to almost every ICT scenario, platform and tool you can find in a large complex organisation. Further it has given me first-hand experience of working in areas outside of ICT such as field services (Roads (6,200+km) and Parks (3,200)); and for our multi award-winning Contact Centre (1.2M calls annually plus multiple digital channels). In this time my own team has successfully delivered more than 500+ ICT projects, worth $1B+, and of all sizes, complexities and business outcomes. Not many ICT executives would have that experience; and it is why I bring a very different focus as a Digital champion for your board. I am proud of the balance that I have achieved with my commercial heritage and my public-sector experience. I believe that this offers a unique combination of acting with velocity and strong governance that will help any organisation deliver on its customer centric and community outcomes, whilst mitigating the many ICT cyber risks and challenges that face all organisations today.