Blog by CIO Studio

All kinds of businesses are feeling the difficulty of getting good staff, from the painting firm to the orchardists in Tasman District. In the IT industry, however, the shortage of skilled staff has been such a long-term problem.

We often get asked for recommendations for software products in a wide range of industries, and usually, this takes the form of “what’s the best product for xxx”. From a customer perspective, this is a perfectly reasonable question, but it does present some difficulties that are worth exploring.

You might have seen some fascinating news over the last week or two – an engineer at Google claimed that their new AI had reached sentience: it could think, feel and reason like a “living” being. Those claims have been largely debunked, but how did the world react?

For decades, the Port of Tauranga has been the largest and claims to be the most efficient in the country. What’s Ports of Auckland’s most recent claim to fame? Burning at least $65m (of presumably ratepayers’ money) in a failed automation project.

CIO Studio CEO Paul Matthews joins Kathryn to look at why one of Google’s Artificial Intelligence chatbots hit the news this week. What’s really going on and is this the dawn of a new AI era?

Are your staff reluctant when you try to move forward in the digital space? Is every tech project a battle within your team? If so, you’re not alone.

The life of a chief information officer is challenging and interesting. In many ways, the CIO has the same variety and complexity as the leader of the business. In fact, there is evidence that effective CIO/CEO relationships are fundamental to the success of any organisation.

Recently I had a discussion with a client who was adamant that what they needed to deliver their digital transformation was a "good, strong project manager”. I had some sympathy for this position.

Recently, it was AA Traveller’s turn to reveal a huge hack that stole the details of potentially hundreds of thousands of kiwis. This reportedly included unencrypted passwords. But they’re not alone – so how do we protect our passwords and why does it matter?

Paul Matthews, chief executive of CIO Studio, looks at stolen passwords, with AA Traveller the latest victim of a huge hack on the Nine to Noon segment of RNZ.