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Can you tell us about your role at the Football Association and the scope of your responsibility ?
I am the Chief Information Officer at the English Football Association ( The FA ). I ’ m responsible for all aspects of technology within The FA , which is a pretty diverse role . As the governing body of English football , we cover a range of different things including managing the national stadium at Wembley , which means there ’ s a lot of infrastructure work involved in what we do . We also run the Emirates FA Cup – the oldest national football competition in the world , as well as the Barclays FA Women ’ s Super League and FA Women ’ s Championship .
We run ‘ grassroots ’ football across the country via our regional County FA network , with millions of players of all ages joining their local clubs and teams to play our national game every week . And , of course , as a governing body , we ’ re responsible for making sure that football and its participants behave .
I also handle transfer windows . When the transfer window opens twice a year , any transfer fees that are paid come through The FA . We act as a clearinghouse for that money , so we see billions of pounds moving through our bank accounts . I run systems that cover everything from ensuring players have the right technology during their downtime on international camps , through to transfer fees and making sure that red and yellow cards are processed correctly .
How do you ensure The FA ’ s technology processes allow it to remain committed to the future of English football ?
In the past , we ’ ve been focused on doing what we could without necessarily going above and beyond . We ’ ve tried to change that over the past few years , which has powered the growth and innovation that ’ s now been recognised internationally by Contino and Tech London Advocates ( TLA ).
Partnership work is very much at the heart of what we do now . We couldn ’ t do this work with the people we ’ re serving within football and within The FA , without partnerships – helping those people to understand what it is we ’ re doing and helping to educate them . Behind this partnership work is the technology . We ’ ve shifted from being an on-premise organisation , which is easy when you own a stadium because you have data centre space . However , this becomes less scalable over time and is no longer where technology is being invested . So , over the past few years we ’ ve made the transition to move to the cloud to become more scalable .
CASE STUDY
WE COULDN ’ T DO THIS WORK
WITH THE
PEOPLE WE ’ RE SERVING WITHIN FOOTBALL AND
WITHIN THE FA , WITHOUT
PARTNERSHIPS .
We ’ re taking much more of a product-based approach to what we ’ re doing and evolving into thinking more about products and less about systems . We try to talk in that way to our customers to make sure they understand the value we ’ re trying to offer them .
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