CITEC's Pat Eather clocks up 40 years of IT history
2 August 2006
Ask Queensland Government Sales Executive Pat Eather about the most significant things he has experienced in his 22 year CITEC career and you get quite a story. Ask him about the most momentous events in his 40 year IT history with the Queensland Public Service and you have enough information for a novel.
"The three most important developments I have been involved in at CITEC would be the development of the Public Access System, CITEC's commercialisation in 1991, and the Queensland Government's ASAP Project," Pat said.
The Aligning Services and Priorities (ASAP) Project, now known as the Shared Services Initiative (SSI), still forms much of Pat's work today. The SSI aims to standardise and consolidate business processes across the Queensland Government's corporate services.
Pat is committed to strengthening CITEC's role in bringing maximum benefits to the Queensland Government and its clients. He was recently awarded a Public Service Australia Day Achievement Medallion, in recognition of his 40 year service to the Queensland Public Service.
Pat regards CITEC's continued role in the Queensland Government as instrumental, citing the offering of a Utility Service Delivery Model to the Government corporate applications and infrastructure services provider, CorpTech as "leading edge". The solution enables CorpTech to meet peaks and demands as required on a user pays basis.
Writing more than 100 programs in his first 12 months with Main Roads, Pat reflected on the days when their one and only computer would not have fitted into an averaged sized home.
"The ICL 1905A had the processing power of a modern day calculator - but for us then it was a technological milestone." Moving on to systems analysis and management positions, Pat worked on the Motor Vehicle Registration System which saw the conversion of all of Queensland's 650,000 vehicle registrations from tape to disk storage. Transferring to CITEC in 1984, Pat was involved in designing the Land Information System Hub (LIS Hub), which was a front end menu providing access to seven land information systems.
"We held a seminar in Sydney to demonstrate the LIS Hub. The looks on the faces as we dialled-in to the Brisbane based public system were priceless - we did something only theorised up until that point in Australia and around the world. It was a quantum leap in the use of technology by government for information access," Pat said.
