New Government Chief Information Officer announced

Andy Nelson is to take the reins as Government CIO on the imminent retirement of incumbent Joe Harley, the Cabinet Office has just announced.

 

The government has repeated what it did with its current head of ICT; appoint a civil servant already in post at a major Department but get them to do it alongside that job. Thus Harley, appointed at the end of January 2011 to take over from departing CIO John Suffolk, is to be succeeded by another ‘part-timer’ – a move that may spark some concern as to how much focus can be applied to this key role. Thus one sceptic on the job share is Katy Ring, Director of analyst group K2 Advisory: “If Andy Nelson is to be Government CIO while also being CIO at the MoJ and whilst chairing the CIO Delivery Board for G-Cloud, he is either a superhero - or the current government does not take the role seriously enough.” 

 

Nelson will hold the role alongside his existing position as the Ministry of Justice CIO when he rise to the role at the start of April.

 

Nelson has a number of tasks apart from his existing MoJ CIO role, such as chairing the CIO Delivery Board for G-Cloud.

 

Nelson was recruited in 2009 to meet a job spec that required the winning candidate to "drive a harmonisation, simplification and streamlining agenda, creating a more efficient and effective IT framework".

 

An Oxford graduate, his CV includes stints as Group Director for Strategic Change and IS at Royal Sun Alliance, Director of computer services at Asda Stores and he was also a management consultant at Accenture when he started his career in 1980.

 

Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office, and himself a previous Government CIO, said, “It is fantastic to be able to assign the role of government CIO to someone who has held major CIO roles in private sector and has been involved in the ICT strategy since the very beginning.