Last night Edinburgh saw the successful launch of Harvey Nash and KPMG's annual CIO Survey at "The Place" in the centre of Edinburgh City.
See photos from the event here
An excellent evening was had by all in what turned out to be a very impressive crowd made up of high powered IT business leaders.
After an initial networking and arrival period the event was kicked off by Harvey Nash's very own Director Rhona Hutchon. Rhona introduced the survey and provided context around the event before Natalie Whittlesey, (Harvey Nash) presented key findings concerning resource gaps and the transformative role of the CIO. The microphone was then passed to Sam Subesinghe, the Head of Advisory for KPMG, who went on to underline the importance of having a digital strategy in 2018 and beyond.
Harvey Nash's CEO Albert Ellis came onto the stage to facilitate the Q&A with a panel of on form, industry leading experts to help digest the survey findings.
The panel introduced themselves and spoke briefly about their role, experience and the challenges and successes in their respective sectors. First up was Anne Moises, CIO of the Scottish Government. Anne spoke excellently about the challenges the public sector faces and the adoption of technology across such a large public enterprise.
Donal Fleming the CIO of fast growing fin tech Modulr was on the panel and he spoke about the challenges of scaling up and how critical the talent in his company is to the overall success of Modulr.
Third on our expert panel was Adrian Blundell the CIO for the department for International Development. He spoke briefly on the challenges of attracting talent into the public sector with strict bandings on salary in place. An excellent point was raised on the use of upskilling existing employees to complete more technical tasks and provide extra value to the organisation.
Next was Eric Bell, IT Director for Scottish Power who impressed the room with Scottish Powers' commitment to green energy. Scottish Power has this year become the first integrated energy company in the UK to shift completely from coal and gas generation to wind power.
Finally Greg Urquhart the Digital Director for The Registers of Scotland spoke about the huge leap forward that RoS has made in the last few years. Once it took up to 8 weeks for a discharge of mortgages, now it can be done digitally in just 8 minutes. Along with many other successes RoS has had.
Some excellent questions were asked by both the audience and Albert Ellis which the panel handled superbly. The survey and Q&A then drew to a close but the night was not quite finished with many of the strong turnout staying behind to enjoy refreshments and a chance to network with other senior leaders.
Now going into it's 20th year the CIO survey provides critical industry and budgetary information that tech leaders can rely on to map out their IT Strategy. It was a great launch night and a huge success that we look forward to repeating next year.
