Mr Steven Matainaho is the Secretary for the Papua New Guinea Department of Information Communication Technology. For the last four years, he has led the reform of Papua New Guinea’s Digital Sector through the formulation of the Digital Transformation Policy, the Digital Government Act 2022, the Digital Governmen Plan 2023 – 2027, and the Government Technology Stack.

Within the last two years, Mr Matainaho has overhauled and established the Department of ICT and operationalized both the National Cyber Security Centre and the Government Social Media Management Desk. Mr Steven Matainaho holds a Master of Business Administration (2015) from Wuhan University of Technology (People’s Republic of China), is certified in Cloud Infrastructure Technology, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics with Electronics and Instrumentation (2002) from the Papua New Guinea University of Technology.

At the age of 14, Mr Matainaho self-taught himself as programmer, and this eventually led to his engagement in several capacities within Papua New Guinea’s Higher Education sector, initially as a lecturer in Engineering Mathematics and Physics at the PNG University of Technology (2006) and later as a Lecturer in Physics and Object-Oriented Programming at the Pacific Adventist University (2010).

In the last decade, Mr Matainaho has worked as an Assistant Director within the PNG Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology and contributed to the formulation and implementation of various legislative and policy reforms including PNG’s Higher Education (General Provisions) Act 2014, National Higher and Technical Education Plan 2014 – 2023, and the National Higher Education Student Scholarship Program. In 2017, Mr Matainaho led the roll out of Papua New Guinea’s National Online Selection System and the National Online Application System.