It’s less than two weeks since we reported on the resignation of UK Government Deputy CIO Bill McCluggage (see UK Government Deputy CIO resigns). And now we hear that UK Government CIO Joe Harley will retire in spring next year.
This really does set alarm bells ringing for us (if they weren’t already). Within weeks of publishing the UK Government ICT Strategy Implementation Plan (SIP), the two top IT leaders within UK Government have announced their departures. If the ICT strategy had a real chance of making a difference to the way UK Government procures and implements ICT in the short-to-medium term, we would have expected Harley and McCluggage to have stuck it out for a bit longer and taken a bit more glory. Harley has been in his post for less than a year - see Joe Harley confirmed as UK Government CIO. Our concern is that neither thinks the strategy’s objectives will have a significant impact within the timescales set out.
We commented at the time of McCluggage’s resignation that we hoped to see Harley take on the role of UK Government CIO full time in order to give the implementation of the strategy the greatest chance of success (he is currently continuing in his role as CIO at the Department for Work & Pensions – a role which he has had for the last seven years). Clearly that won’t now happen. The DWP press release states that “the process for selecting his successor, as CIO for DWP, will begin immediately. The Cabinet Office will run a separate process for the next Government CIO along with the process already underway to replace Bill McCluggage”. There is no indication if the Government CIO will be a full-time role this time around.
Harley’s shoes will be tough to fill. He is one of the most prominent CIO’s in UK Government having led some significant changes in his time at the DWP – the biggest spender on IT in central government. Notably he led a major IT transformation programme designed to modernise the department’s public services. He also sits on the UK Government’s CIO Council and has sought to lead by example by putting some of the ICT strategy’s key tenets into practice in his own department. Most recently, for example, he has specified that ‘agile development’ will be used to develop the Universal Credit welfare system.