Digital Transformation - a masterclass presentation
Event details
Digital Transformation - a masterclass presentation
Join Desmond Seeley, Executive Manager, AI & Engineering at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, as he shares lessons and insights from leading a major digital transformation within one of Australia's largest and most complex organisations.
Desmond's presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with academics from the ANU School of Cybernetics, bringing different perspectives to the challenges of navigating technological and organisational change.
The conversation will be moderated by Gareth Davies, an experienced technology practitioner and Master of Applied Cybernetics student at ANU.
Lessons from digital transformation at CBA
Drawing on his experience leading the delivery of an Integrated Development Platform for finance and regulation at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Desmond will take participants inside the realities of transformation at scale.
He will explore:
Why transform? The organisational and business pressures driving change, including the need to deliver digital products faster, more accurately and at lower cost.
What changed? How platform engineering was used to respond to these challenges, what it enabled, and how changes interacted with surrounding systems and processes.
How was change navigated? The people, resources, methods and technologies involved in implementing significant change within a large and complex organisation.
Bringing a cybernetics lens to the conversation
Following Desmond's presentation, academics from the ANU School of Cybernetics will join the conversation to explore what the CBA experience can tell us about transformation more broadly.
The Q&A panel will consider digital transformation as a systems challenge: how people, technology, organisational structures and decision-making interact; how change in one part of a system affects another; how transformation could enable the productive upgrade of other systems; and what it takes to steer complex systems through periods of technological change.
Who should attend?
Organisations across Australia — large and small, public and private — are navigating rapid technological change. The challenge is not simply adopting new technologies, but understanding how to introduce, govern and adapt them within complex organisational systems.
This event is designed for leaders, executives and practitioners working across technology, transformation, strategy, AI and organisational change who are interested in the practical realities of transformation and what a systems perspective can add.
In-person only. Registration is essential. Please register for your preferred session.
Canberra - 17 September
Location: Innovation Space, Level 2, Birch building, ANU, Acton, 2601
Q&A panel: Des Seeley, Jessamy Perriam, Paul Wong and Paris Smith-Davies
Sydney - 22 October
Location: Australian Institute of Directors, Level 5, 1 Martin Place, Sydney 2000 (entrance via 159 Pitt St)
Q&A panel: Des Seeley, Paul Wong, James Allsopp and Matthew Nicholas
Session details
- 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm
Lunch
Lunch will be served outside of the Innovation Space before a prompt start of the talks at 12.30pm.
- 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Digital Transformation | Canberra
Location: Innovation Space, Level 2, Birch building, Australian National University 12.30 - 1pm: Des Seeley presentation 1 - 1.30pm: Gareth Davies presentation 1.30 - 2pm: Q&A panel: Des Seeley, Jessamy Perriam, Paul Wong and Paris Smith-Davies
Meet the speakers
Des Seeley
Desmond Seeley is a technology executive with three decades of C-level leadership spanning financial services, telecommunications and international broadcast. He has worked in four consecutive senior technology mandates inside the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, most recently as Executive AI and Engineering, leading the adoption of CBA's Internal Developer Platform and a governed enterprise approach to AI-powered engineering across one of Australia's most complex regulated environments. Earlier in his career Desmond founded and scaled technology businesses, held CEO and CTO roles across finance, telecommunications and international broadcast—including building the company that delivered broadcast infrastructure for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa—and advised boards on technology strategy. He is the founder of Business Collateral, an executive leadership initiative exploring how judgement, systems thinking and applied AI intersect for leaders navigating the Intelligence Age. Desmond is speaking today in a personal capacity, drawing on his own experience.
Gareth Davies
A systems programmer by trade primarily on O/S and database, Gareth has worked in various I.T. roles over a number of decades. He has been a product manager for a leading U.K. vendor of software tools and E.R.P systems and a director in consulting, software and services and publishing firms in the U.K. and Australia. Recent experience includes consulting in quantitative trading, financial services with particular attention to privacy at NSW E-Health and in global legal practices. He has a long-standing interest in Cybernetics, now realised through study for a Master in Applied Cybernetics at the ANU School. Gareth is speaking today in a personal capacity, drawing on his own experience.
Meet our Q&A panel members
Paul Wong | CBR & SYD
Paul Wong is a Senior Lecturer within the ANU School of Cybernetics. He completed his PhD with the Automated Reasoning Group in the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering at the ANU. Paul was formerly a lecturer in Software Engineering at the University of Wollongong, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Commonwealth Grants Commission, and a Defence Analyst with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Over the last decade, Paul has been a data practitioner covering all aspects of the strategic use of data as an enterprise and national asset. Paul has managed enterprise class systems and data, played a key role in the establishment of a national consortium to support digital research infrastructure, and contributed to the improvement of research data management practices nationally. Since 2014, Paul also founded a private consultancy business to provide strategic data advisory, analytical and training services for organisations.
Paris Smith-Davies | CBR
Paris Smith-Davies is Partner of Product Delivery at Evolve Capabilities, where for the past five years he has led the development and delivery of business management systems for the Australian federal government. A business process management practitioner by background, his focus is the governance backbone of digital delivery — the business management systems that give complex public-sector institutions clear accountability, control and assurance as they transform. He is particularly interested in what AI means for process governance: how organisations capture its gains without loosening the controls that keep delivery disciplined and accountable.
Jessamy Perriam | CBR
Jessamy Perriam is Associate Director (Education) and Senior Lecturer in the ANU School of Cybernetics. She is a digital sociologist with particular interest in public sector digital transformation, failure, and digital methods. Her PhD focused on how people demonstrate mundane disruption and failure using digital and social media, with a focus on how responsibility and accountability is enacted in those moments (Goldsmiths, University of London, 2018). Prior to becoming an academic, Jessamy was a radio and online producer at the ABC and enjoyed telling stories of everyday Australians in Central West NSW and Perth. However, a growing curiosity around technology and society drew her to the UK to join the second cohort of the MA/MSc Digital Sociology program at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since then, her career has taken a non-traditional path, with applied research roles in and alongside the UK government’s digital transformation efforts, writing and producing online and distance education materials for The Open University, and moving to Denmark and turning a weekly lecture session into a talk radio show during and after the pandemic. It’s been every bit as fun as it sounds. Jessamy is part of teaching team on the Master program in Applied Cybernetics and hopes to bring sociological, feminist and science and technology studies (STS) approaches to the program, with a strong appreciation for and attention to the mundane in any complex system. Jessamy also holds a part-time Associate Professor role at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Outside of work, Jessamy enjoys the challenge of singing choral evensong, cooking vegetarian meals and awkwardly punching the air in BodyCombat class.
Matthew Nicholas | SYD
Born and bred on the small Channel Island of Guernsey, Matthew brings a global outlook and a relentless work ethic to everything he does. Awarded a scholarship by Northern Trust, he studied Business, Management and Economics at the University of Exeter before entering financial services, spending more than a decade at top tier global institutions in Guernsey and London, and later JP Morgan in Sydney – experience that gave him a real appreciation for the people behind high-performing organisations, and what they need to thrive. Matthew moved into recruitment because he cares about connecting people with the right opportunities. He chose one of the more challenging paths early on, building a career in the complex world of cyber security recruitment, and went on to establish one of Australia's leading cyber recruitment practices. In early 2021, he joined former colleagues Andrew Lance and Stuart Jackson at Lanson, where he now leads senior technology search for the business. Often retained or trusted with exclusive briefs, Matthew specialises in placing senior technology leadership positions (CIO, CTO, CDO, CISO) into top ASX 250 organisations. He takes the time to understand both sides of every search closely, working at the highest level to secure the calibre of talent that moves the needle for an organisation. Outside of work, Matthew competes with the same level of effort and intensity. He's completed numerous triathlons, marathons and a half Ironman, with a full Ironman on his radar next. Unfortunately turning into a MAMIL before the age of 40. He also enjoys motorbike racing, skiing, hiking, reading, and is always looking forward to exploring new countries – a mindset that shows up in how he works: driven, dedicated, and genuinely invested in getting the best outcome for the people he works with.
James Allsopp | SYD
My background is in strategy: developing it, executing it, and helping organisations close the gap between the two. Over the last 15 years I have worked in several large Dental Industry organisations at the Executive level, leading projects in e-commerce, cultural change, Technical Service improvements and M&A activities aligned with capability development and competitive advantage. I'm currently a full-time student in the Master of Applied Cybernetics at ANU in Canberra — the first and only master's program in applied cybernetics in the world. I've come into the ANU program because I believe cybernetics offers a uniquely useful set of tools for the current moment, particularly around the ethical adoption of “AI” with regard to intergenerational equity, the redesign of work, and the use of feedback to manage and maintain strategic execution.
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