About the CTO

The CTO is committed to providing a challenging and stimulating workplace, where all staff can fulfill their career ambitions in a diverse and supportive environment. We place considerable emphasis on the importance of teamwork, alongside our commitment to delivering the best possible value for money services to all of our members. People work for the CTO primarily because they believe in our commitment to using ICTs to help make a difference to the lives of some of the poorest and most marginalised people in the Commonwealth.

Our ethical guidelines emphasise that “We treat all our employees with respect and dignity; we recruit, promote and remunerate employees based on suitability, merit and inclusiveness, without discrimination, and provide them with opportunities for advancement. Both the CTO and our employees consider health and safety to be of paramount importance”.

All staff employed at the CTO, other than interns and those employed on short-term contracts, must be from a Full Member Country. In 2011-12, the Secretariat employed permanent staff from Ghana, India, Mauritius, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Cameroon, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Diversity in employment is one of the CTO’s main strengths. In our 2012 annual staff survey, 100% of our staff commented that they felt that their role is personally satisfying, that diversity is valued at the CTO, and that CTO employees are sensitive to religious and cultural differences; 94% said that staff whose race is a minority are welcomed and treated with respect.

As well as our full-time staff, we welcome interns and secondees from our members and partners. We have also been privileged in recent years to have been awarded prestigious Commonwealth Professional Fellowships to enable mid-ranking professionals from Commonwealth countries to gain valuable experience working with us that they can then implement swiftly on return to their own countries.
We maintain contact with all of our former interns, secondees and fellows through a newly created and vibrant alumni network.