Celebrating 100 years: Anne's Story

Anne Platts is completely ingrained in technology at CSC. Starting out managing an admin support team in the early 90s, Anne has been integral in maintaining, upgrading and evolving the systems we use at CSC.

Anne was involved in the original build of the ComSuper Superannuation Administration System (ComSAS), which saw all of our CSS and PSS member data migrated off the Department of Finance IBM mainframe and into our very own custom-built application.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a big technology launch without a minor hiccough.

“We were all ready to start the processing, and one of the people in the team did a little dance, they hit the button to start it, and everything stopped. I’ve had a rule since then that we don’t do any little dances.”

After six years with ComSuper, Anne decided it was time to spread her wings elsewhere—spending close to 10 years working in IT systems roles across government agencies and the private sector—but the call back to CSC was hard to resist. With now a total of 31 years under her belt with CSC, Anne has seen a lot over her years with the organisation, and has been at the forefront of our technological evolution, leading teams to handle customer data and overseeing trailblazing changes to our systems.

“We have had five different modernisation programs in the time I have worked here.”

“The most significant was when we (ComSuper) moved all our data off the Department of Finance’s mainframe computer onto computers that we actually owned. They had to be put in a room that used to be full of photocopiers, and it was built out as a computer room.”

“I’ve seen the computer room go from something not much bigger than a broom cupboard, or a laundry, to now having our computer equipment in three data centres and in the cloud.”

Not only has Anne been a key player in developing and implementing systems at CSC, she was also in the starting line-up of women in IT across the entire Public Service.  

“When I first started in IT, the Public Service Commission did a booklet in women in IT, and there were seven of us, and now there are hundreds. So the landscape has changed.” 

“There has been a lot of growth, but that’s just what has happened with IT. Whenever people tell me that this new technology is going to put me out of work, it just means I have got another five years of work to do.”