The head of technology and chief information officer at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), Ramez Katf, has followed former boss Chris Jordan out the door, as the new regime of taxation commissioner Rob Heferen takes shape.
In what could soon be the first of a few notable senior departures, the chief information officer and second commissioner of enterprise solutions and technology told staff he will leave the organisation within weeks.
“My tenure as CIO and second commissioner for EST will conclude on 30 April 2024. It’s hard to believe how quickly the last eight years have passed but as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end,” Katf told colleagues in an update to ATO staff.
“I’m sure over the coming weeks there will be many opportunities for reflection but much like commissioner Jordan, my foot also remains firmly on the pedal — while I know our future is in very safe hands there are still things I’m keen to achieve before I leave the building.”
Second commissioners at the ATO are appointed for a term of seven years and it is unknown whether Katf was offered a renewal.
The ATO is regarded as one of the Australian Public Service’s leading technology shops. It has bedded down major projects like Standard Business Reporting and Single Touch Payroll and recently relaunched its website without a visible hiccup.
“The Mandarin reported we updated our website and no one really noticed. This is a good thing!” Jordan said in his valedictory address, a conspicuous hat-tip to Katf.
No successor or succession plan is mentioned by Katf in his parting note to staff. However, it is understood the non-renewal of a second commissioner’s appointment does not of itself extinguish a previous APS senior executive service position in the ATO if one was held.
Conversely, a redundancy could make for an amicable and quick transition during a time of general change, with Katf certain to be hot property on the tech recruitment market, especially in financial services and large enterprise circles, where talent often has to be imported from overseas.
Although the ATO is regarded as streaks ahead of other large agencies still battling so-called legacy system debt, the agency recently lost a fair bit of paint and at least $1.2 billion to first-person GST refund fraud where taxpayers were inventing expenses to claim automated refunds.
The scandal hit tax hard, with senior ATO officers grilled over the fiasco that exploded via TikTok. Many of the fake claims cost more to recover than they were worth.
An attempt by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to get the ATO to rebuild its registry databases also came a-cropper, with the project ultimately sent back to ASIC after $530 million was spent.
The project is one of several tech wrecks soon to be investigated by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit that has expanded its remit to rope in a series of high-profile projects that cratered.
A common thread in many projects is that they have been sorely underestimated in terms of their complexity and the amount of time it takes to integrate disparate stand-alone legacy systems to work as one platform.
Irrespective of why Katf is leaving the ATO, seven years in the chief information officer’s chair at a major transactional agency like ATO is a long stint in corporate tech chief terms, with many roles usually set between three- to five-year contracts at the most.
Prior to joining tax, Katf “was a managing director at Accenture for more than 29 years, working with government and non-government clients to deliver large-scale transformational change, in particular with innovative, technological business solutions”, his second commissioner profile says.
He won’t be short of offers.
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