With more than 30 years experience in the IT industry, Pete Shea
was a natural choice as CIO for Newfoundland and Labrador when he
assumed the role in the fall of 2004. He credits his work as
regional director for xwave in Ireland and Newfoundland as helping
prepare him for the role he has today. His office has recently
undergone a major transformation, and he discussed this as well as
his passion for computer programming, and teaching at Memorial
University, with Lisa Williams, senior writer with InterGovWorld.
Excerpts from their conversation follow:
Q. Let's start with your background. I know that you studied
mathematics, computer science and education at Memorial University
in St. John's, and that you were on faculty there as well. What was
that like?
A. Yes, I actually stopped (teaching) a couple of years ago,
because of pressures of work. When I moved to Ireland I had to give
it up as I obviously couldnb t commute from thereb &I was there at
Memorial for 21 years and I really enjoyed itb &
I started in the business back in the "Jurassic period,"{about
30 years ago. And when I came out of Memorial, out of computer
science, I started as a programmer. Somebody once told me, and I
don't know if it's true, that Bill Gates still carries around a
card that says "Bill Gates, Programmer." I don't know if with all
that money that you'd need to do that, but I guess it just speaks
to the level of passion and interest some people have in it.
And if I could do it and make the money I make today, I think
I'd still be in programming. As I rose out of programming and into
analysis and design many years ago, I sort of lost the contact with
programmingb &I loved it so much, and teaching programming at
Memorial was a way that I could "feed my habit."
Q. And is that an area that's growing at Memorial, with respect
to computer studies and IT? Is that something that students are
showing more of an interest in?
A. Its funny you should ask that because we're in the throes of
a bit of a resource crunch here in the office with not only
programmers, it's really right across the whole organization,
including systems analysis, and project management. My leadership
group was talking just the other day about what we could to do to
stimulate some interest at the university or the college level here
to reinstitute some of the programs that frankly have been cut over
the yearsb &
You've probably seen similar developments to what we've seen
here, which over the years have been like the dot-com bubble in
that we have an IT bubble where a number of years ago it was really
cool and sexy to go do IT, and a lot of people did it, and then all
of a sudden we had a surfeit of those folks and then there was a
backlash, and nobody did IT. And we had a couple years where people
came out and couldnb t find jobs, and then we had the crash in 2001
in the whole industry. So a lot of people stopped doing IT, and
consequently what we have five years later is a situation where
very few IT graduates are rolling off the assembly line at
Memorial, and also at the colleges here.
So we're seeing that we can't get resources with either
entry-level people or experienced resources to take on some of the
work that we have. So it's a real issue for us, and we're not
seeing as much interest in it now as we did a number of years
ago.
Q. You were the regional director for Newfoundland and Ireland
for xwave. How did that work prepare you for what youb re doing now
as CIO?
A. It was a tremendous experience, I really loved it. Before I
moved to Ireland I helped establish the office there, and my group
at xwave got the first piece of work in Ireland. Coincidentally I
had been the project manager for a system at Memorial, besides the
fact that I was teaching there, and I also was project manager for
the student registration system which was an online real-time
adjudication for registering students over the web, which in
1992/1993, was pretty new at the timeb &and that was a great
experience, we had all this experience with university registration
systems and the business of how university runsb &and we answered a
Request For Proposal (RFP) for a system in Dublin and we won the
bid.
So for a couple of years I was commuting back and forth, working
with the university sector in what they called the third level
institutes there, helping to sell things and install university
type applications, and while doing that we were also trying to
broaden our base in Ireland. And when the opportunity came we set
the office up and I moved over so it was a great opportunity.
I was there for a little over a year, and I commuted for
probably four years before that, and it's a horrible commute by the
way. It sounds sexier than it is when you're doing it, but youb re
going into work bleary eyed after a long flight. But the
opportunity was fabulous and as part of that not only did we work
with the university sector but we were doing a lot of work with the
government in Ireland. That was by far the biggest customer we had,
so a lot of the things that we were doing there helped propel me
into this particular job as well.
Q. Ireland seems to have a really booming IT industry. Did that
help serve as a model for the work you're doing now in
Newfoundland?
A. The thing about Ireland, they were hit like everybody
worldwide in 2001 with the downturn, so it was a tough timeb &Ireland
has done remarkably well, they don't call it the Celtic Tiger for
nothing, and they've really capitalized on some very intelligent
public policy initiatives to help spur the economy over there.
Their IT economy, like everything, boomed, but of course when the
bloom came off the rose they were hurt as wellb &but still having
said that we did good business and things were going very well
there and I got to make a lot of good connectionsb &
I think it did help prepare me for (the CIO office) I certainly
had a lot of interesting assignments when I was there which
dovetailed very neatly with what Ib m doing today in organizing the
office. As well, we've undertaken a fairly dramatic reorganization
to deliver IT here.
Q. With the transformation that you're doing right now in the
CIO office, what are the ultimate goals and where are you at right
now?
A. I started in the fall of 2004 with the CIO position, and,
just a little bit of background history to set the stage for you,
there was a Crown corporation established way back in 1969, that
was responsible entirely for the delivery of IT services to the
governmentb &it was really the government's IT armb &and it went until
1994 when government in it's wisdom decided to outsource thatb &
It was a real shock to them to all of a sudden lose that and
have that outsource privatizedb &So that was 11 to 12 years ago, in
the first few years it was a little bit like shock, like being
plunged in the cold water, and then all of a sudden you had the 16
individual departments that existed at the time that really didn't
have much co-ordination and focus, and had all of their IT stripped
away and given out to somebody else, and because there was no
central focus or leadership they all sort of grew organicallyb &and
the 16 departments were leaderless, they just decided on whatever
standards or process or procedures, whatever they wanted to do,
whatever fit their own needs without any co-ordinationb &
Over time you really didn't have anybody at the senior level who
was an advocate for IT and seeing IT as an investment and as an
integral part of the delivery of government programs and services.
Nowadays all government systems have an IT system somewhere. You
don't deliver motor registration services now without a computer
systemb &every government department you could name has a great
dependency on computer systems, and yet nobody was really speaking
at a senior level as the champion for all this, and IT was seen
unfortunately for many years as an expense to be managed downb &
So when the new premier came in, Premier Williams, he saw that
this didn't make a lot of sense at all, and he was a major
proponent of IT, and one of the major priorities was to hire a CIO
and to give some focus, attention and strategy to the delivery of
IT services. Thatb s sort of how I came about.
Q. So was that the catalyst for this, Premier Williams'
receptiveness to making IT a priority, and establishing the CIO
position for Newfoundland?
A. Absolutely. Nobody would give you any argument here on that.
If it had not been for him the office (CIO) itself would not be
created and I think we would still be 16 very disembodied
entitiesb &meandering about doing our own things in the way that made
sense at the timeb &I got recruited to come in and do this; it was a
tremendous opportunity, but I absolutely have no doubt that it
would never have come my way if it hadnb t been for the support of
the premier in driving this idea forward.
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