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CIO Profile: TfL's Steve Townsend on shared services and internal balance
Meeting Steve Townsend, CIO of Transport for London (TfL) at the organisation's offices near the O2 Arena is a little apt. It requires you to travel on one of the newest lines on London's extensive Underground network.
It's like a vision of what the rest of the network should be like. Unfortunately, the reality is not quite so new and sparkly.
The remit of the company is vast. Around two billion passengers travelled on London's 8500 buses last year; every day 3.5 million journeys are made on the Tube; and more than 10 million Tube, bus and train passenger journeys a day are paid for using the Oyster contactless card.
In all, 24 million journeys are made every day over the whole TfL network.
Mention public transport to anyone in London and you'll get a strong response, so it's not surprising that Townsend is not the most open CIO I have ever interviewed.
Public transport is a political football and as a senior executive at TfL, he has learned to play the political game. Having said that, he is prepared to discuss the areas where he thinks improvements in the systems that support the city's transport networks can be made.
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Townsend is a relatively old hand in TfL, having risen from the role of director of information management in his four and a half years at the organisation.
He took the role from Ian Campbell, who succeeded Phil Pavitt, now CIO at HMRC. They are big boots to fill by anyone's standards, but Townsend clearly has the experience he needs to help him.
As we look out onto the River Thames - once London's most important travel artery in its own right - Townsend explains that TfL is essentially divided up into two businesses. The first focuses on London Underground and the overground rail network within London.
Some of the IT requirement for this division is around sharing core services and commodity IT. Others are more bespoke, such as rail operations management and rolling stock asset management, which are predominantly in-house operations.
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