I work in the IT Department. Over the last few years it has become a chaotic and ineffectual mess after being infiltrated by a couple of former Rio Tinto executives. The department has become obsessed with reducing its full time equivalent staff to look better on university benchmarking stats but as a result increasingly outsources its work to externally contracted employees at 2-3 times the going rate. Mind you the only people who win in this arrangement are the recruitment agencies who take a big cut. Other times the IT Department blows millions on vendor product solutions but only utilises a fraction of the capability.
Trying to implement even the most minimal of change to systems or processes in the organisation is a nightmare as there is no clear information on who is responsible and accountable for many things. As a result decisions are often made by a consensus of operational staff so that they can be rubber stamped by higher level committees that lack the context to understand what they are approving.
Recently the department has been undergoing an “IT Transformation” which has mostly been about adopting a dated plan-build-run IT operating model that the industry has been progressively moving away from. This restructure has become a protracted nightmare that has simply added whole new layers of ineffectual middle management, has led to poor productivity, lower levels of service, and extremely low morale.
While I feel confident that QUT engages in world class research and delivers good educational outcomes, if you are at all thinking about a professional career within the IT department I would suggest that you reconsider your options.
