CIO of the Year Nominees 2019

Sjoerd Blüm has been CIO of Schiphol since 2017. Two years earlier he came on board as a member of the IT management team, with the assignment to develop the IT innovation competence and to set up the business technology center (a CIO office). He had spent 13 years at ING and Nationale Nederlanden, resulting in a final responsibility for the cyber domain. “At ING I became an IT professional. I saw how beautiful the complexity of technology was, that success in technology was essentially about people and has enormous potential. ”

With his studies at TU Delft, an MBA from INSEAD and eight years of experience at McKinsey you could call Anton Rutten a consultant. Since 2004, however, he has been at Rabobank, where he has a rich and varied career. As a global COO, for example, he was responsible for the worldwide IT & operations of Rabobank International, before taking on responsibility for software development and maintenance throughout Rabobank in 2016. The collaboration between business and IT is a common thread throughout his career, culminating in a transition to DevOps from the entire organization.

Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) is in the midst of a digital transformation. CIO Perry van der Weyden, who is the spiritual father of this large-scale program, developed during the process from missionary to diplomat, as he himself says. He feels perfectly at home within the government – but he thinks that IT work in that sector deserves more appreciation. A conversation with an inspired man with understanding and respect for the interests of others. An idealist? “Yes, but one with realistic fringes.”