Banker Sours

It was Australia's equivalent of "IT Doesn't Matter" and a shot heard 'round the world: Commonwealth Bank CEO David Murray's bitter critique of IT at the World Congress on IT in Adelaide. In 2002 debate raged as to whether his tongue-lashing was directed externally at the industry or internally at his own shop. In this exclusive interview with CIO, Murray explains what prompted those strong words.

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IT Congress Redux

Late last year Murray was named chairman of the Future Fund, established to tackle the $140 billion in public sector superannuation liabilities that the government expects it will face by 2020. His challenge will be to grow a pool of funds big enough to meet those liabilities.

So will the fund invest in technology stocks?

"We will have a very broad range of investments, many of them in the equity market, and undoubtedly partly in technology. To rule that out would be to rule out diversification, which we would never do. The volatility in that sector should be seen against the stability in other areas," Murray says.

Asked what sort of a speech he might make at an IT congress in 2006, Murray says he would go back to the message about information systems and people being so closely connected. "You can't have successful change without putting those together - putting the language and the technology together. The industry has improved. They [suppliers] are recognizing that if you are selling a service then you will only limit sales if you can't provide that service. If the sale is based on an expectation that can't be delivered they only hurt themselves."

However, he still harbours deep reservations about the value of e-mail within large organizations. When he was CEO of the CBA, "I never looked at e-mails because I would never have got my job done".

In 2002 he argued that "if every desktop a business puts in place is a royalty payment, if that desktop is used for staff e-mails or for downloading pornography and hence creating legal risks if technology isn't meeting the requirements, then you should question its value. Our outgoing e-mails create enormous legal risks for the bank . . . Any one of our 34,000 employees can send an e-mail . . . one sentence written by an employee could bring the bank down."

He still worries about the legal status of e-mail, and believes government should consider developing legislation to protect corporations against abuse of e-mail by employees.

Today Murray does read the occasional e-mail, accepting it has become the de facto business communication tool. "The most effective use of technology is the ability to communicate and make decisions in a far more timely manner," he says. But floods of e-mail can be counterproductive to the "capacity to get things done".

And his core message remains that getting things done is what information technology should be all about.