Value prioritisation and AI guardrails were redefining the CIO mandate at NSW Government, Rest, and Village Roadshow

Technology had moved too far into the core of service delivery for CIOs to remain in a supporting role.

In this CIO Edge panel, Arul Arogyanathan, CIO at Village Roadshow, Jeremy Hubbard, Chief Technology and Data Officer at Rest, and Aarti Joshi, CIO at NSW Department of Customer Service, argued that CIOs were increasingly being asked to shape operating models, influence business strategy, and define where technology could create the most value.

As digital capability became more central to growth, service delivery, compliance, and customer experience, the CIO’s role was becoming more commercial, more strategic, and more directly tied to organisational outcomes.

Key takeaways:

• CIOs were playing a larger strategic role because technology had become central to service delivery, growth, compliance, and customer outcomes.
• AI progress depended more on business readiness and value clarity than on waiting for perfect data or technology foundations.
• Disciplined prioritisation, clear guardrails, and a small set of aligned metrics were helping CIOs direct resources toward the initiatives that delivered the strongest impact.

CIOs were shaping business architecture, not just technology delivery

The panel argued that the CIO now held a firmer mandate to drive organisational and operational change.

Technology sat at the centre of modern service delivery, whether in licensing, identity, customer experience, or regulatory reform, and that had pulled the CIO closer to core business decision making.

Reporting lines were continuing to move nearer to the CEO, strengthening the CIO’s influence and reflecting the reality that digital capability now underpinned almost every important outcome.

That shift was also changing how success was measured. KPIs were becoming more focused on customer centricity, business value, and growth rather than technical delivery alone.

The result was a more front footed role, with CIOs expected to help shape business architecture and strategic direction rather than simply respond to enterprise demand.

AI progress was depending more on business readiness than perfect foundations

On AI, the panel’s view was pragmatic.

Organisations needed to prioritise progress over perfection. Even where data foundations were still incomplete, targeted and contained use cases could still deliver measurable value.

Jeremy Hubbard pointed to Rest’s contact centre, which handled 2,000 to 2,500 calls a day, where AI was already being used to automate call wrap ups and reduce handling time before full data modernisation had been completed.

The panellists also stressed that the biggest barriers to AI return on investment were not primarily technical.

They noted that only 22% of ROI barriers came from technology and 14% from data, while the remaining 64% came from business readiness, prioritisation, and understanding where value sat.

To move faster, Arul Arogyanathan argued for democratising AI by giving teams the ability to use it within clear guardrails, using a model of centralised governance and federated execution.

Value discipline was becoming the CIO’s operating lens

The panel also made clear that prioritisation had become more important in a tighter economic environment. Investment decisions were being assessed through a mix of business and technology strategy, regulatory obligations, growth potential, cost efficiency, and sustainability.

Jeremy Hubbard described allocating funding across core operations, transformation, and a protected innovation budget so experimentation could continue without being crowded out by immediate pressures.

Aarti Joshi framed prioritisation through citizen impact, regulatory risk, and service operability, noting that public sector value often played out over a longer horizon.

Across sectors, the panel agreed that scarce resources needed to be directed through a small number of clear metrics, with every initiative aligned to them.

In their view, that discipline was what allowed CIOs to connect architecture, value, and innovation rather than treating them as separate conversations.