Interview: Tom Meade, CIO of the Year, UK IT Industry Awards

Tom Meade, CIO at Registers of Scotland talks of his delight at winning the top gong at the recent UK IT Industry Awards

Tom Meade, CIO of Registers of Scotland, the department of the Scottish Government responsible for compiling and maintaining records relating to property and other legal documents, landed the CIO of the Year award at the recent UK IT Industry Awards.

Computing caught up with him to discuss what the win meant for him personally, and what he has lined up for 2018.

Computing: What did you think of the awards, and what does the win mean for you personally, and you organisation as a whole?

Tom Meade: I'm absolutely delighted to have won the award. I've heard UK IT Industry Awards being described as the Brits awards for the IT Community and it's really created quite a buzz for us at Registers of Scotland is recognising the effort that's going into our transformation. It's great to see that that the experienced judging panel understand the great work we're doing. We've progressed from being extremely cautious in our digital aspirations to having high confidence and appetite for change.

Personally, I'm delighted - I'm an optimist by nature and confident, but never thought that I would be acknowledged on a UK national level.

CTG: How did you feel about the judging process - from the initial entry to the face to face panel?

TM: I was impressed by the judging process. The initial submission was very broad and certainly gave the judges a lot to work with to scrutinise those on the short-list. My interview was challenging and enjoyable - the judges understood the brief very well, and were able to ask searching questions of me, given the background they had. It was like a cross between an interview and a strategic review.

CTG: Would you recommend other individuals, departments and organisations enter the UK IT Awards?

TM: I would definitely recommend entry in the awards. A lot of the organisations that were shortlisted for different prizes are organisations that I would hold in the highest regard, and some of the projects that were recognized - or that even didn't win - were very impressive. I liked the scrutiny involved in the process - having experts meet you face to face to understand what you have done, why and what you're planning gave it a degree of rigour that you know you'll have had a fair crack.

CTG: What's next for you at Registers of Scotland? What are your priorities there for next year in terms of projects and initiatives?

TM: While we have come very far at Registers of Scotland, we have great ambition to go a lot further. We are currently focussed on simplifying what have been very complex and long running registration processes, to simple digital services for our customers. Our aim is to be a fully digital business by 2020 - this means digital transactions, but also services for our staff that mean they can work in whatever way or place is most convenient to do the work.

We have started to unlock our data and have launched ScotLIS in the last month. This for the first time allows citizens and professionals to navigate the land register through a map - sounds easy, but given our 400 years of data, is quite an achievement. We have been asked by the Scottish Government to use this as the basis for a land and property hub for Scottish Public sector data. It's very exciting and will be a great asset for people of Scotland. We are starting to explore new technologies also - we're starting to apply Natural Language Processing to our legacy data sets, we're looking at applications of block-chain in conveyancing

CTG: What's the next step in your career?

TM: I have really enjoy working in Registers of Scotland and would like to broaden my horizons a little in the future. I agreed to work for a three year term which will be coming to a close at the end of the year.

I'm a Lean and Agile advocate and practitioner at a senior level. I know a lot of organisations really struggle with its application, so I think I have a lot to offer perhaps in a non-Executive capacity or consultancy.

Check out Computing's gallery of photos from the awards here.