Meet the Buyer: Logan City Council’s Jim Barclay

Jim Barclay is the chief information officer of Queensland’s Logan City Council, one of the largest councils in Australia with more than 300,000 residents. The City of Logan is situated between Brisbane, Ipswich, Redlands and the Gold Coast, and is one of the largest and fastest-growing cities in Australia. 

What’s one of the biggest IT projects you’ve undertaken recently that involved third-party IT companies? 

In terms of industry standards, our projects would be quite small, as we have a large number of business units carrying out different functions to support the needs of Logan City Council and the City of Logan. Size-wise our most recent was the replacement of our GIS system.

What does a systems integrator have to do to impress you and win your business?

Come with a proven track record and supply a product that does what they suggest it will.

Is it all about price?

No, it is about getting value for money. There have been a lot of IT systems bought by governments and companies based on price that have never delivered the expected outcome, so in terms of value for money they rated very poorly, but may have been cheap.

Can you tell us about the last time an IT service provider impressed you?

Vendors impress me when they’re open, upfront and tell you what their product will and won’t do. When they deliver, it meets the expectations of the business in a positive fashion.

Can you name one or two mistakes that IT service providers often make?

Overselling their product and under-delivering to the business. Thinking that all levels of governments in Australia operate in exactly the same way and have exactly the same issues and opportunities.

How is the cloud affecting your approach to IT investment in hardware and software?

It has always been the goal of internal ICT shops to focus on where they add the biggest value, but in the pre-cloud environment that has always been very difficult, because there is an expectation that you have ownership of the quality of the services provided, including those provided by vendors. 

In the cloud service delivery world, the ownership of quality goes back to the service provider, and as long as they manage that well, internal service providers can work with the business units on getting the best outcomes, ensuring business gets better aligned outcomes. The second advantage is the move from key user-focused systems to customer-focused systems in the cloud. 

Most of the current legacy systems used by business and governments have been designed by the key users, with key users or specialists in mind, whereas the new systems are being designed with the end user or customers in mind.

Is your use of external IT companies increasing or decreasing?

At this stage, were are not seeing a big increase as we still see opportunity for improvement in the industry as a whole. When it is your reputation you are putting on the line, you want to ensure you get it right. 

RESUME

Employment

2015–present:   Chief information officer at Logan City Council

1993–2000:  Information services infrastructure manager at Ipswich City Council

1985–1993:  VS system engineer at Wang Australia

Boards

2004–2007: Director at Resolute Information Technology 

Associations

2010–2013:  Committee member Queensland at AIIA