Munby named BEIS boss
Department appoints business sectors head as government’s youngest permanent secretary
Credit: Innov8Social/CC BY 2.0
Sarah Munby has been named permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Munby, who took up the role this week, has been the department’s director general for business sectors since last July.
At 38, she is understood to be the youngest perm sec in Whitehall.
Before joining the BEIS last year she spent 15 years at McKinsey, where she was a partner and led the management consultancy’s UK and Ireland strategy and corporate finance practice.
BEIS said in a statement that Munby had “worked with some of the UK’s largest companies to change their strategic direction, and led much of McKinsey’s work on productivity across the UK economy”.
Related content
- Civil service chief says Covid response shows government’s ability to be ‘more flexible, more digital, more data-based’
- BEIS chief on revamping the department’s tech and rolling out the Industrial Strategy
- Industrial strategy promises boost for data infrastructure, skills and R&D
She takes charge of a department that employs 3,000 civil servants, and has responsibility for a number of tech-related policy areas, including research and innovation.
The Industrial Strategy that BEIS is charged with implementing also features Artificial Intelligence and Data as one of its four central ‘grand challenges’. To help meet this challenge, BEIS is also tasked with delivering the policies and initiatives set out in the £1bn AI Sector Deal agreed by government two years ago.
Munby’s appointment comes three months after the department signed a deal to pay executive search company Russell Reynolds Associates up to £63,000 to fill the post.
The new perm sec succeeds Alex Chisholm, who was promoted to civil service chief operating officer in April. Sam Beckett has been acting perm sec since then, and will provide support to ensure a “smooth transition”, BEIS said.
Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill said Munby had been “instrumental in supporting businesses to help them prepare for exiting the EU and in responding to Covid-19, and brings with her a wealth of experience from her time as a partner at McKinsey”.
Sedwill added that Beckett had provided “exceptionally strong leadership” to the department since Chisholm’s departure.
Business secretary Alok Sharma said the appointment was “very good news for the department and for this government”.
“Sarah is an outstanding public servant who has already made a significant contribution to the work of the department,” he said.
Share this page
Tags
Categories
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM READERS
Please login to post a comment or register for a free account.
Related Articles
Digital chief Harriet Green tells PublicTechnology Live event that department has focused on specialisms, rather than the generalist skills the civil service recruitment process is...
Government plan pledges use of common standards and development of new identity platform
Alison Pritchard talks to PublicTechnology about plans for the 2021 census, ensuring public trust in statistics – and her next epic boat journey
Head of engineering Stuart Taylor discusses how 1,000 staff across the department support each other’s work
Related Sponsored Articles
SolarWinds explains how public sector organisations can make the most of their hybrid IT investments - delivering services that are both innovative and reliable
There are many reasons to keep your Oracle workloads running on local servers. But there are even more reasons to move them to the cloud as part of a wider digital transition strategy. Six Degrees...
As misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine spreads, Granicus outlines key considerations for local government when delivering a successful vaccine communications campaign
Higher Education institutions are some of the most consistently targeted organisations for cyberattacks. CrowdStrike explores the importance of the right cybersecurity measures.