Published on the 06/07/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

Paul Shetler has been named chief executive officer of the Government’s Digital Transformation Office (DTO) charged with updating the way commonwealth services are delivered…

The Australian Government has appointed Shetler for a five year term. If he stays that long it will be a record for the executive, who has held multiple short term, high profile roles over the last decade and a half.

He stayed less than half a year in his last role, where he was a director of the UK’s Government Digital Service responsible for digitising the delivery of citizen services. Prior to that he was chief digital officer of the Ministry of Justice, a position he took in January 2014 after leaving the private sector.

This is Shetler’s ninth role since 2000. He has held high profile roles at Netfish Technology, Microsoft, SWIFT, Oracle, Digital Proximates and Burnt Fingers for periods between seven months and three years before moving into the public sector in 2014.

According to a media release issued by the Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, who has oversight of the new DTO which officially opened for business last week; “Paul was the outstanding candidate following an extensive executive search and competitive recruitment process, and has been appointed to the DTO for a period of five years.”

His role, once he has relocated from London later this month will be to, “deliver government services that are easier to access, simpler to use and faster to transact.”

Certainly he and the DTO already seem to be on the same page as far as the intersection between private sector capabilities and public sector requirements are concerned. In May, David Hazelhurst, the DTO’s interim CEO floated the idea that Australia’s banks could be responsible for authenticating citizen identity and possibly managing communications between Government departments and citizens – which was achieved in the UK in March this year on Shetler’s watch.

What has yet to be determined is the way in which the DTO and AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office) will co-exist, and particularly the impact on the Government’s chief technology officer and procurement co-ordinator John Sheridan.

Sheridan has however wasted no time in letting Shetler know what he would like from the DTO, today tweeting a link to a Fast Company article that details President Obama’s “stealth start up” which has hired technical talent from across the technology sector.

Sheridan added: “I’m hopeful @AusDTO can be like this over time.”