Director General Hachem Ben Essalah

Director General, Information Management and Technology Services and Chief Information Officer

Hachem Ben Essalah, Director General, Information Management and Technology Services and Chief Information Officer (CIO), has diverse experience in information management (IM), information technology (IT), competency management and organizational and business transformation.

As the CIO, Hachem’s role is to provide vision and leadership for developing and implementing IM and IT initiatives in support of DFO priorities. Hachem is responsible for developing national corporate IM and IT governance policies, standards and practices related to the initiation, direction, integration and management of IM and IT. In his role as CIO, he directs the planning and implementation of enterprise IM/IT initiatives in support of business operations to improve cost effectiveness, service quality and digitalization as well as business transformation.

Prior to joining DFO, Hachem was CIO and Director General at the Public Service Commission (PSC) where he led the implementation and transformation of multiple important systems such the Public Service Resourcing System (PSRS), used by all government departments for external staffing, and the Priority Information Management System (PIMS), a system that played an important role in post-budget 2012. Prior to his position at PSC, Hachem held a senior executive position at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat where he headed a team responsible for developing generic organizational models, generic work descriptions and competency profiles for the Government of Canada’s IM and IT specialists. Before that position, Hachem held executive positions at the Canada School of Public Service and with a cluster of three federal organizations: the Department of Finance, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the former Canada Public Service Agency. Hachem’s knowledge of DFO is good as he was previously Director of Planning and Information Management, a position in which he was responsible not only for IM but also for planning, enterprise architecture, database management, business intelligence tools and EKME.