The McCue Interview: Dave Lynch, CIO, Go Ahead Group

Dave Lynch, a no-nonsense northerner hailing from the seaside town of Blackpool, has come a long way since starting out on the trams and buses that parade up and down the Golden Mile promenade - although he still holds a season ticket for the town's tangerine football club.

Lynch - voted one of the UK's top 50 CIOs last year - is now group technology director at Newcastle-based transport company Go Ahead Group, but he began his career more than two decades ago at Blackpool Transport in the early 1980s.

Go Ahead is one of the UK's largest public-transport providers, operating various rail franchises, more than 3,500 buses, airport cargo and baggage handling services and car park management.

Each of the business units operates autonomously and as group technology director, Lynch's role was to develop an IT strategy during a period of acquisition-based growth from a £500m turnover company to a £2.4bn company.

"My role was to look at the scope for an acquisitive time period - so not slowing acquisitions down. I started with a blank sheet of paper. It was really sitting down and trying to understand the business and where they were going before diving in and spending money on IT," says Lynch.

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That meant some standardisation of systems across the organisation but Lynch was keen not to create a large "group IT mentality" and his nine-strong team - which jumps to 44 with Go Ahead's London Midland acquisition - is built more around business services and programme management and with business units retaining control over their IT decisions.

"Some of our competitors have very large central IT functions working against the business," he says. "I see group systems as a foundation - necessary evil."

Go Ahead works closely with its key tech suppliers - ABS, Atos Origin, Cable & Wireless, Cedar, Edenbrook (for Oracle applications) and Orange.

"I view them as an extended part of the IT team. Quality people I can invite into internal meetings," he says.

Lynch is also on mobile operator Orange's UK customer advisory council helping steer technical development and he also acts as an advisor to the aviation industry through his board position with a key software company in that market.

But he draws the line at outsourcing the company's technology silver to suppliers in pursuit of efficiencies. "I don't believe in outsourcing. I have seen a number of people who outsource lock stock and barrel. As you get into it you see it is restricting them or costing them more money."

Of course there are financial benefits to economies of scale when it comes to IT but there is no mandate to force that on the different business units.

"It's about vanilla - but making sure it fits the business. We would never take a piece of technology to a business that couldn't afford it," he says.

There are also no large-scale technology rollouts across the business - with every project having to have a business case showing payback within three years.

"We have spent to save. We are not a big bang company. We have never signed up Oracle to deliver more than a single project. Every business case we have had has a payback," he says.

Some of the technology challenges facing Go Ahead and other transport organisations are around mobile and wireless, electronic ticketing and smart cards.

"One of the biggest challenges is to get more done in the field," says Lynch.

Work around the government's ITSO smart card interoperability standard is a big project for Go Ahead Group and the company is mandated to deliver ITSO-based smart cards for passengers across 135 stations as part of the London Midland acquisition.

Dave Lynch's CV
2004 - present: Go Ahead Group - group technology director
2000 - 2004: Effective Technology Management - director
1998 - 2000: Sema Group - business development manager
1990 - 1998: Meridian Information Systems - MD
1985 - 1990: Blackpool Transport - computer co-ordinator

Go Ahead also has SMS ticketing in the North East covering around 800 million passenger journeys. NFC (near field communications) is on the agenda but presents other challenges.

"The big problem is how can you read it and replace the paper ticket," says Lynch.

Wi-fi connectivity on buses and trains is another issue transport operators are being forced to look at to try and attract more passengers, especially business travellers.

Go Ahead has got WiMax on Southern Trains and has put wi-fi on the 24 hour Oxford to London coach, the Oxford Tube.

Wireless technology is increasingly pervasive across Go Ahead, from CCTV on buses that can download incidents in real-time wirelessly to wi-fi on transport to wi-fi tablets for workers in airport cargo sheds.

Reducing emissions is a corporate issue and so another key technology project is on-board diagnostics for vehicles that will help reduce fuel consumption.

As for the future, technology is set to continue transforming the public transport experience for passengers.

Lynch says: "If you look at public transport over the last 10 years the growth is phenomenal."