The founding leader of GDS, who resigned only halfway into his scheduled term, is one of four posts HMRC is seeking to fill, representing more than half its non-exec line-up
HM Revenue and Customs has lost three directors in recent weeks – including former government digital chief Mike Bracken, who was added to the boardroom set-up last year to advise the department on transformation.
Having been announced as a non-executive director of the tax agency in October 2024, Bracken’s profile on GOV.UK was updated last week to state that he “resigned in April 2025”. This represents only half of his scheduled term of one year on the HMRC board. No further detail is given.
In response to enquiries from PublicTechnology, an HMRC spokesperson said: “We’re grateful to Mike Bracken for his contribution to the Board and his advice and expertise in supporting our priority to reform and modernise.”
The department recently published a Transformation Roadmap covering the rest of the decade, and setting out a sweeping reform plan setting out ambitions for launching numerous new digital services, as well as delivering “cultural change” across the department.
Other recent updates to HMRC’s online presence have also seen two another non-execs, Patricia Gallan and Paul Morton, removed from the list of directors.
Bracken’s appointment was part of a wider boardroom shake-up of HMRC which included the swift removal of four incumbent non-execs– in a sweeping overhaul which sources told PublicTechnology lacked rigour and transparency, and politicised the board of a non-ministerial department.
Gallan, meanwhile – a former senior officer at the Merseyside and Metropolitan Police Services – has been part of the department’s boardroom set-up since September 2019. Also arriving six years ago was Paul Morton, formerly a senior manager at the Office for Tax Simplification.
PublicTechnology understands that Gallan and Morton have both departed HMRC following the conclusion of two three-year terms as directors.
The department has recently held recruitment exercises to appoint two external “tax and enforcement specialists” to join as non-executives. Also being recruited for are specific replacements for Bracken, and his role chairing the HMRC’s Reform and Modernisation Committee, as well as Bill Dodwell – another alumnus of the Office of Tax Simplification, who was also named for a one-year term in October 2024 and currently chairs the specialised Closing the Tax Gap Committee.
All four posts will be appointed on a three-year term, with annual remuneration of £20,000 for 20 days work a year. The appointments will represent new postholders for more than half of the seven non-executive directorships on HMRC’s board.
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Bracken arrived at the department having previously been the founding leader of the Government Digital Service. Having left the civil service in 2015, he established digital consultancy Public Digital.
Since the general election last year, the relationship between the firm and the new Labour government has come under scrutiny. In the run-up to the election, Bracken was one of two senior figures at the company who were involved in advising the then shadow government on tech-related issues – both of whom we subsequently appointed to official roles.
Partner Emily Middleton was seconded to the office of Peter Kyle, in a move classed as a donation-in-kind of £65,000. Immediately after Labour’s victory – and Kyle’s appointment to the post as secretary of state for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology – the new government announced a major shake-up of Whitehall’s core digital agencies, with Middleton appointed on a two-year contract to lead the revamp.
Bracken, meanwhile, was a key member of a panel of experts convened by the Labour party in April 2024 to advise on how best to “modernise” HMRC. Six months later, he was named as a non-exec director of the department.
At the time, Public Digital indicated that it did not do any business with HMRC – nor, following Bracken’s appointment, would it do so in the future. The company did, however, recently win a £5m contract to support the rollout of government’s Public Sector Reform scheme.
