FSA CIO on her career in tech: ‘It’s where the future is already happening’

What makes a suc­cess­ful chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer (CIO) in 2021? Ask Julie Pierce, the trail­blaz­ing direc­tor of open­ness, data and dig­i­tal at the Food Stan­dards Agency (FSA), who ranked fifth over­all and was the high­est-placed woman in the ven­er­at­ed CIO 100 list for 2019. 

Hav­ing learnt the news about the CIO 100, which recog­nis­es the UK’s “most trans­for­ma­tion­al and dis­rup­tive” CIOs, Pierce recalls feel­ing “hap­py [and] hon­oured”. Fol­low­ing a pause, she adds: “And sur­prised.” Why? “If some­one had told me I would be recog­nised at this lev­el back when I was, say, 30, I would have thought it impos­si­ble, for so many rea­sons. So my reac­tion was: ‘Oh my God!’”

To an extent, her reac­tion to the acco­lade is under­stand­able in an indus­try dom­i­nat­ed by men. But the recog­ni­tion is also a cause for cel­e­bra­tion. Giv­en that only one in six tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists in the UK are female and just 10% are IT lead­ers, the Bris­tol-based Pierce proud­ly serves as a role mod­el for oth­er women seek­ing to reach the top in tech.

The increduli­ty is mis­placed, though, when one con­sid­ers her ground­break­ing 41-year career. After start­ing off with a mis­step in oil explo­ration – more of which below – she enjoyed 13 years as a con­sul­tant at PwC, where she was one of the first female part­ners. Her CV also includes stints with the Home Office and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Ser­vice.

More recent­ly, Pierce has excelled as CIO at the Ani­mal and Plant Health Agency and the Depart­ment for Envi­ron­ment, Food and Rur­al Affairs (Defra). In August 2015, she moved from Defra to the FSA, a non-min­is­te­r­i­al gov­ern­ment depart­ment which mon­i­tors risks and issues of con­cern regard­ing food.

The case for data openness

As direc­tor of open­ness, data and dig­i­tal (“a long but pret­ty cool title”) at the FSA, she per­forms a raft of duties. These include the CIO role, while also cov­er­ing sci­ence and Wales. 

Impor­tant­ly, Pierce is a fer­vent advo­cate of open and trans­par­ent data. Indeed, in the pub­lic sec­tor, and fur­ther afield, the FSA is often held up as an exem­plar of what is pos­si­ble through open­ing up data. This pro­gres­sive­ness is in no small part thanks to Pierce.

“Being open and trans­par­ent [with data] is so impor­tant to me,” she says. “And at the FSA it is fun­da­men­tal to our core being; we are here to be open and trans­par­ent on behalf of the con­sumer.” 

Pierce explains that her agency rais­es the alarm when “things are not quite right for con­sumers con­cern­ing food safe­ty and authen­tic­i­ty”. As an exam­ple, she points to a recent­ly imple­ment­ed ser­vice that uses pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics and machine learn­ing to mon­i­tor glob­al risks. 

The FSA pub­lish­es 70% of its datasets. Pierce argues con­vinc­ing­ly that fel­low CIOs should push to open data and dri­ve col­lab­o­ra­tion inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly. The FSA has been try­ing to per­suade busi­ness­es to be open and pub­lish their data, she says.

“We can see the large amount of data col­lect­ed about food in pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor. For instance, we can see the oppor­tu­ni­ties from data-rich dig­i­tal plat­forms where they may be sit­ting on real insights as to food risk, allow­ing us all to take action before some­thing goes wrong.”

Under Pierce’s direc­tion, the FSA has “put as much effort as pos­si­ble in the last few years” to devel­op the infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to open data and make it “eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to con­sume that data”.

Beyond the status quo

Pierce believes in “trans­for­ma­tion through the appli­ca­tion of mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and insights from pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics to busi­ness prob­lems”. And in a clar­i­on call for fel­low CIOs, she has urged on LinkedIn: “Let’s be real­ly dif­fer­ent; let’s go beyond mere­ly automat­ing the sta­tus quo.”

Pierce has always sought to go beyond the sta­tus quo, but she orig­i­nal­ly had lit­tle inter­est in tech­nol­o­gy. Hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wales, Ban­gor, in 1980 with a first-class degree in math­e­mat­ics and phys­i­cal oceanog­ra­phy, Pierce sought a hands-on role in the oil-explo­ration indus­try. The fact that it was “com­plete­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed” made it more attrac­tive because of the chal­lenge.

Iron­i­cal­ly, she switched direc­tions and flour­ished when the path was blocked in her cho­sen pro­fes­sion because of her gen­der. As a woman, she was for­bid­den to step foot on either the boats or the rigs. Pierce’s impres­sive career in tech can be traced back to that ear­ly change of tack. 

How­ev­er, the com­bi­na­tion of fierce ambi­tion and tal­ent has ele­vat­ed her. It is this desire that mod­ern CIOs must pos­sess to excel, she sug­gests.

“My FSA role includes the CIO and a lot more. That in itself is one of the things I’m most proud of: that I have risen and gone above the CIO role into oth­er aspects of the busi­ness.” Indeed, to secure a place in the board­room, CIOs must demon­strate the many dif­fer­ent ways they can add val­ue. 

Pierce says there has nev­er been a more excit­ing time to embark on a career in tech and climb the ranks to CIO and above. “It’s an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing sec­tor, as it’s mov­ing and evolv­ing so quick­ly,” she says. “It’s becom­ing more rel­e­vant, ubiq­ui­tous, and essen­tial to every­thing we do. There­fore, you can choose any sec­tor to work in – food, health­care, finan­cial ser­vices, what­ev­er.

“What makes a career in tech so attrac­tive nowa­days is that it is acces­si­ble in so many more ways com­pared to when I began. You can come in through some of the more inno­v­a­tive data ideas, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence or robot­ics, or via look­ing at acces­si­bil­i­ty and the way users engage with the tech, or the hard­ware route.”

After a final pause, she adds: “It’s the place real­ly where I think the future is already hap­pen­ing.”