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Rio Olympics: Games CIO explains ICT and IoT

by Roberta Prescott
written by Roberta Prescott Share
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RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian Elly Resende is leading the orchestration of all information technology and communication infrastructure providers for the 2016 Rio Olympics and Paralympics. Less than a month from the opening ceremony of the major event, the technology director said information and communications technology deployments are following the established schedule, with 80% delivered.
Resende spoke with RCR Wireless News in a video interview during a visit to the Rio Olympics headquarters in July. With more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunication and IT sectors, the CIO conducts daily meetings to make sure all details are taken care of ahead of the games.

Resende explained that the Olympics and Paralympics aren’t the occasion to foster any brand-new technology or work as a showroom. Therefore, the ICT team tends to use the most reliable technology possible. “But we do have the concept of the ‘internet of things’ if you consider all the sensors that we have deployed for measuring and capturing the data from athletes,” he said.
He also discussed the process of assessment of all International Olympic Committee technology partners to divvy up tasks and understand if there would be any gaps. “It’s with meetings, reviews and also working as close as possible that we can manage to have everyone on board, in the same table, discussing and finding proper solutions,” he said.
The IOC officially opened the Technology Operations Centre for the Rio Olympics in November. On the occasion, Jean-Benoît Gauthier, information and technology director at the IOC, said Rio 2016 will represent significant progress in the IT systems used at the Games. TOC is the command and control center for technology, and manages technology at 144 Olympic venues.
During the actual Games, the 800-square-meter facility will monitor and control the IT systems that support the running of the Games and deliver the results from all the Olympic and Paralympic sports competitions to the world’s media in real time.
Click here for more stories about the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series focused on the technology deployments that support the Rio Olympics. Travel costs to Rio de Janeiro were provided by Cisco.

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Editor, [email protected] Roberta Prescott is responsible for Latin America reporting news and analysis, interviewing key stakeholders. Roberta has worked as an IT and telecommunication journalist since March 2005, when she started as a reporter with InformationWeek Brasil magazine and its website IT Web. In July 2006, Prescott was promoted to be the editor-in-chief, and, beyond the magazine and website, was in charge for all ICT products, such as IT events and CIO awards. In mid-2010, she was promoted to the position of executive editor, with responsibility for all the editorial products and content of IT Mídia. Prescott has worked as a journalist since 1998 and has three journalism prizes. In 2009, she won, along with InformationWeek Brasil team, the press prize 11th Prêmio Imprensa Embratel. In 2008, she won the 7th Unisys Journalism Prize and in 2006 was the editor-in-chief when InformationWeek Brasil won the 20th media award Prêmio Veículos de Comunicação. She graduated in Journalism by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, has done specialization in journalism at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain, 2003) and Master in Journalism at IICS – Universidad de Navarra (Brazil, 2010) and MBA – Executive Education at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

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