Q&A with Civica’s Mark Owens Mark Owens, Managing Director at Civica NI, chats with Sync NI about his career journey and the technology sector in Northern Ireland.
For over 30 years Civica has established itself as a global software powerhouse within the public sector. What projects are you particularly proud of that have made lasting positive impacts on our lives?
There are a few examples that stand out for me. When I arrived at Civica as Managing Director, back in 2018, one of the first projects I got involved with was working with BT as the prime development partner for the (Northern Ireland) NI direct application. Civica also developed a critical application for Access NI, a disclosure and barring service, that protects vulnerable people and children in NI.
More recently, I’m most proud of the project Civica completed in response to COVID. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, GP surgeries across NI were suddenly inundated with phone calls with people saying they think they might have COVID. This placed a phenomenal amount of pressure on our GP’s, and nobody really knew how to deal with this increased demand. When we got a call from Digital Health NI asking for urgent help to develop a symptom tracker mobile application for the public, we went straight to work and within just 10 days we developed the COVID Care app. The app was then published in the Apple and Google stores within 24 hours and available to every member of the public who had a postcode in NI. Overnight calls to GP’s dropped from 6,000 to 1,000. As we started coming out of lockdown there were rules about accessing retail, food and beverage and travel services. Everybody wanted to get out again, but you had to show proof you were vaccinated. We spent around 6-8 weeks, working alongside several phenomenal teams, to turn around a COVID certification solution. This was quite a complex app with what it does on the back end, but also how visible it was to NI. Overnight we had 200,000 requests from people to get their certification status onto the app and we were able to service that. So far, we have serviced around 1.2 million applications in NI from a population of 1.8 million. We were able to respond and get first-time correct certifications up to over 80%. These are success rates beyond all expectations. Even to this day the app is helping people to travel overseas once again. I was in Spain in July this year. Once we landed in Spain, I was asked to show my COVID certificate. I was extremely proud to use the app and show my certificate. It was scanned and I was welcomed into Spain. When I look back, I think we did ourselves justice in delivering a fully working solution under immense timescales, during extremely challenging times.
Coming from a background in electrical and electronic engineering, how easy was it to transition into working for some of the largest global consultancy companies?
I decided not to go down the university route and did a B-Tech in engineering at Belfast Met, which was the perfect foundation for me to understand how technology actually works, initially through hardware. I transitioned into the world of PCs back in the late 80’s when the first real computers in offices were large with lots of hard drives. I progressed into network and server technology, which was the next logical step, focused on building Novell and Microsoft Windows networks. I spent a lot of time in cold server rooms and data centres. One day I saw a SAP consultant sitting at a lovely warm desk on a laptop, and thought I've got this wrong here, and realised it was time to get into the software side. I completed SAP training and got certified. I loved the fact that this technology was being used by some of the biggest companies in the world. Soon after, I was lucky enough to meet a program director of Capgemini who I got on with very well and one day I got a call that said, “Would you like to come work for a very large consulting company?” So, the transition to that was quite easy because I was extremely confident in what I was doing with SAP.
When I went to work in London for one of the big top five consulting companies, I felt out of place compared to the big consultants I was working alongside, when in actual fact I had a very good level of understanding. Within three months I was promoted. And a year later I was running the SAP technology practice within the UK. Three years later I was the vice president running the SAP UK practice, which at the time had around 500 consultants in GB and another 1,500 in India.
In NI I don’t think we are very good at recognising how talented we are. Something I'm trying to promote in NI is to showcase, and shout about, how good this country is at what we do. We have so much talent here, yet we just don't tell anybody about it.
Belfast is establishing itself as a significant global technology hub with 30,000 people now working in the technology sector. What are the main drivers for this growth?
It’s about the talent we have here, and this is what attracts FDI's like Allstate and Liberty IT to NI, and has done for over 30 years. While 30,000 sounds like a lot of people, in my opinion this could be 50,000 people tomorrow, based on the need and demand in the sector.
So, what are the main drivers? Digital transformation is on everybody's agenda and to be able to transform and move services online, or multi-channel, you need talented developers, business analysts and testers. So, all companies, whether they're public or private sector, in NI have a digital transformation agenda and we need to be able to develop the talent pool to make sure that we can service it. The growth in demand is here now and, I can tell you as an employer in NI, that demand is increasing every single day.
As one of the most vocal proponents for developing the relevant skills for the 10x economy, what more can be done to guarantee the future growth of the sector?
I was very pleased to be asked to be involved in the 10x Digital Economy strategy paper, sponsored by the Department for the Economy, that was developed in conjunction with Allstate, Liberty IT, Kainos, Instil and GCD Technologies. While we might all be competitors in some shape or way, we all have a single goal which is to promote NI as a great place to work and show that we can grow our economy substantially in a vibrant sector.
Currently, for every seven jobs available in the tech sector in NI there's one candidate. While that’s shocking, it's also a great opportunity to tackle the big issue which is around building awareness and education in our industry.
I understand there has been a decline in people applying to Queen's and Ulster University computer science degrees over the last three or four years. When discussing this with my network it seems that parents have a significant role in moulding their children’s careers and commonly encourage their children to explore careers in more traditional sectors such as medicine or law, as opposed to IT which is deemed a harder industry to get into. Also, when we look at post primary schools, unlike English and Maths, IT is not on the mandated curriculum in Key Stage 3. I think we need to change this. We need to make the teachers, careers teachers and principals aware of how vibrant this industry is. Most of the graduates in the tech sector get paid 20 to 30% more than any other graduates in NI. The reality is that the tech sector pays more and has available jobs, so it’s really important that as a sector we promote this and raise awareness in schools. Civica are running a Digital Awareness Week in October, for the second year running, and invite tech companies in NI to come along for 30 minutes, virtually, and offer their insights on the tech sector to all post primary schools in NI. Last year we had over 40 people provide insights across a vast range of subjects and topics including women in tech, AI as well as specific coding languages. The feedback from last year was incredibly positive.
There will be some announcements coming out in the next couple of months about a new organisation that we're setting up to help to promote our sector and lobby the government. Our customers included in this conversation include the Department of Education and the Department of the Economy, I think they too can see the issues and understand they also need help from the private sector. We recently met with Minister Gordon Lyons, and he was very supportive of what we were putting to him around the opportunity and what needs to happen to help grow the IT sector. I expect that 30,000 number to be somewhere close to 50,000 within the next year, year and a half, making the tech sector one of the biggest employers in NI.
We often say that the youth are the future. Are we doing enough in NI to make sure children are equipped for the digital economy?
No, I don’t think we're doing enough as a collective and in my opinion awareness of our industry should be happening at an earlier age. Primary school children are intelligent, open and curious – they want to actively engage and be creative. Primary school children are very aware of technology, I’m sure many six- or seven-year-olds have a smartphone, with 30 plus apps. If we can influence the education authority here in NI to change the curriculum, and make computer science mandatory at year eight, nine and ten, then there will be a real chance children will want to do it for GCSE and hopefully A level. We have seen this first hand with our own outreach program, called “Coding for Kids”, where we teach school children basic level programming. The positive response from the principal, but more importantly the children, has been fantastic.
Also, when looking at the demographics of the NI IT sector we have a real diversity issue throughout education. Right now, in our universities, I understand that 20% or less of the computer scientists are female. This is a real problem. We need to attract females at an early age to come and discover the opportunities available in the sector. I talked about the Department of Education and the Department for the Economy to help stimulate awareness, but we also need the schools to be aware of it as well. Every tech company in NI I talk to understands this is a big issue for them and want to help. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity to grow those 30,000 jobs to 50,000 jobs by next year.
If you had one piece of advice for somebody considering a career in technology what would that be?
Put simply, keep an incredibly open mind. The advice being given to young people in a career is very important, and the parent is probably the most influential person to their child's career. While many parents think they understand our industry the truth is that they don't. I think if you were considering a career in technology then I encourage you to reach out to technology companies and ask for a conversation to find out more.
If I had an 11 or 12-year-old call me tomorrow and say ‘Hi, I'm interested in this. Can you tell me a bit more about the industry?' I wouldn’t hesitate to invite them to meet one of Civica’s developers and explain the super things we do.
Earlier you asked what I was very proud of, well one of Civica’s goals is ‘Transforming services, improving lives’ and that's what we do in NI, we improve people's lives in NI, not in another European country, not in the US, but right here in NI. For example, Access NI is a critical service that protects children and vulnerable adults. We develop the criminal justice sharing system for PSNI so a police officer has nine or ten different views of a citizen's identity or criminal record, so they can make an educated decision about that person’s risk.
Our biggest challenge is getting schoolchildren to look at technology differently. We need the people advising them about their future careers to understand the huge opportunities available right now. To do that we need to raise awareness and enable children to make informed decisions about their education. With all the initiatives Civica is involved and invested in, I want to inform children how they can change the way NI and its citizens interact with digital services, here in NI.
