APRA hunts for new chief data officer

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has a newly-created chief data officer role, reporting to executive director of technology and data Bruce Young.

Young was appointed to head APRA’s new technology and data division when it was launched last month. 

The banking, insurance and superannuation regulator’s new technology and data division combined its enterprise services technology team and the core data capabilities teams from its data analytics and insights division.

The data part helps APRA meet its mandate "to help protect the Australian community through data-enabled decision-making,” according to the recruitment advertisement,

The role will “set the strategic direction and business plan of the data branch consistent with the technology and data plan and APRA corporate plan."

The new chief data officer will “develop data procedures and policies, and work closely with various departments to collect, prepare, organise, protect, and analyse data assets while ensuring that APRA meets the required governance and privacy standards.” 

In its most recent annual report [pdf], APRA said that in the 2021-2022 financial year, a new data collection platform called “APRA Connect” was launched as part of its plan to “enhance data-driven decision-making.” 

“It has also been developed to improve APRA’s capacity to collect data on behalf of other government agencies, under the principle of ‘collect once and share'," the authority said.

The new APRA Connect infrastructure was also used to launch phase two of a superannuation data transformation in April 2022, it continued. 

“This phase of the project lifts the breadth, depth and quality of the data APRA collects from the superannuation industry, providing APRA with a better analytical capacity and providing for further improvements in superannuation transparency," it said.

“APRA also released its ‘Direction for Data Collections’ strategic roadmap in March 2022, which considers how to deliver deeper, richer data to both APRA and its stakeholders across all industry sectors, and provides a plan for decommissioning legacy technology.”