Head of Digital Customs

Main Responsibilities: 

IT Project & Program Management

• Act as a Technology Expert to plan and manage technology roadmap, workplans and technology assessments, tools.
• Assess the current and expected workload for IT resources and develop an operational plan with milestones, deliverables, and timelines for review and approval by Pakistan Customs;
• Manage the scope of work related to new demands and change requests on the existing system.
• Ensure that proper testing and quality assurance processes / mechanisms are in place before loading to production.
• Ensure risks on changes or new projects are well documented and are properly communicated to CSOO before signing off.
• Manage hiring/planning of resources of Software development and other teams
• Develop close coordination with PSW’s Digital Transformation office whereby ensuring best practices of project management are in place in producing documents, reporting and dashboarding for the top management.
• Create overall technology standards and practices and ensure adherence;
• Monitor performance indicators, teams KPIs and IT budgets to assess technological performance.
• Present change and new projects status report to the higher management, Board, shareholders, and other stakeholders;
• Participate and effectively contribute to the efforts of researching, studying, evaluating, and contributing to RFI/RFP/RFQ content and technical requirements.

1.     Application Maintenance & Support

• Review and assess the current change request mechanism in collaboration with relevant stakeholders and suggest improvements;
• Lead and manage the change requests mechanism in close coordination with Directorate of Reforms & Automation (DRA);
• Supervise and manage the IT teams for the development and deployment of the system to execute and implement changes based on priority agreed with the DRA team;
• Conduct technological/development impact assessment w.r.t PSW, One Customs application and any other application;
• Support Pakistan Customs in sunset of the One Customs system and its complete transition to the PSW/WeBOC platform;
• Identify integration issues between WeBOC and PSW application and resolve it on urgent basis;
• Provide expert technology advice and guidance to senior stakeholders to assist the business and IT in the formulation of strategies, technology investment decisions and solution option selection;
• Create & maintain WeBOC’s Current and Future Enterprise Architecture Model in the context of Business & IT strategy and recommend capability increments for enterprise digital transformational plans as defined by corporate strategic vision of the company;

2.     Planning & Coordination

• Ensure close coordination with other service providers engaged by Pakistan Customs with regards to data centre, application management, hosting, server management, information security etc.;
• Plan and coordinate with data centre / system infrastructure teams to ensure functionality and efficiency of the application is at par;
• Develop efficient coordination mechanism with DRA team and domain officers to understand their business needs, challenges and how to reflect into the system using right technical resources;

3.     Digital Customs Transformation

• Define and lead the Next – Generation technology stack for Customs Management ensuring the data management and governance component would be the main driver for future customs management system implementation;
• Identify, hire, and manage qualified team of technologists who can lead the software development of future customs management application;
• Lead and develop Enterprise Architecture competence, including developing clear accountabilities, providing mentoring, and coaching to ensure the right people are in the right roles to deliver the IT services required in alignment with expectations of internal and external stakeholders;
• Lead the implementation of Architecture solutions from establishing project requirements and goals to solution "go-live" ;
• Establish and manage the enterprise architecture practice including guiding principles, framework, standards, and guidelines encompassing all architecture domains (Business, Data, Application/Solution, Technology/Infrastructure, Security architecture) ;
• Recommend transformation of technology through introduction of new technologies or retirement of obsolete technologies of the company

Required Skill Set:

• Proven ability to interact with internal and external stakeholders to build strong and long-lasting relationships. 
• Understanding of business areas, mapped to the business capability model 
• Understanding of technologies, mapped to the technology capability model 
• Must have excellent understanding on EA framework certification (TOGAF, Zachman, etc.).
• Preferred professional IT certifications: (e.g., TOGAF, PMP, COBIT, ITIL…) 
• Industry visionary and avid technologist at heart 
• In-depth knowledge and understanding of web system architecture, design and development;
• Hands on experience with complex project management; and
• Outstanding communication, interpersonal and leadership skills.
• Prior experience of working as Technology Expert in a multinational company or large-scale public or private sector enterprise will be preferred; Experience in leading major ICT transformation programs will be considered an asset.