May Canberra Managers Forum

Acting First Assistant Commissioner
Australian Electoral Commission

Mr Courtney is the A/g First Assistant Commissioner of the Capability Division at the AEC.

As head of the Capability Division he oversees the information technology, finance and business services, and Funding and disclosure functions within the AEC.

Mr Courtney is responsible for a wide variety of AEC programs and services including electoral funding and disclosure, overseeing the AEC’s parliamentary engagement and financial management, and the development of new IT systems and technology to support electoral processes.

In the lead up to the 2016 federal election, Mr Courtney led the Senate Reform Program to implement the most comprehensive Senate voting reforms in 30 years.

The Senate voting reforms introduced optional preferential voting for Senate positions and required the development of a fully tested, certified and operationalised end-to-end Senate count solution in only 12 weeks.

The semi-automated process, using scanning and image recognition technology was developed in partnership with Fuji Xerox and enabled the AEC to capture and count ballot papers preferences for 16 million Senate ballot papers at the 2016 federal election.

From 2010 to 2013, Mr Courtney was the Chief Information Officer for the AEC and oversaw key advances in the use of technology by the agency, including the development of online enrolment services, electronic certified lists at polling places and the use of cloud services for the election results system.

Prior to working at the AEC Mr Courtney was and Executive Manager (2004 to 2010) of the Information Management and Technology Division of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial and Research Organisation (CSIRO), where he was involved in the scoping of major initiatives such as the  Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth.

Before migrating to Australia in 2000, Mr Courtney spent 20 years working in information and technology in Europe and South Africa.

Mr Courtney currently sits as an independent member on a number of Commonwealth agency audit committees, and is a member of the British Computer Society and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.