Liam Maxwell is to take on a new role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for HM Government as the Cabinet Office’s IT Reform Group merges with the Government Digital Service (GDS). As CTO, Liam, who is presently Executive Director, IT Reform at the Cabinet Office, and Deputy Government CIO, will lead the CTO council and CTO executive in government. To paraphrase the announcement, he’ll be working with the CTOs and COOs of government departments or their equivalents to deliver a new generation of digital public services.
Bringing the IT Reform Group and GDS together makes a lot of sense and, together with Liam’s CTO role, highlights the growing importance of the government’s Digital by Default agenda (see also Predictions 2013: UK public sector SITS). Indeed, as we saw in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement earlier this month, digital efficiency is seen as crucial to bringing down public sector costs (see UK public sector SITS: takeaways from Autumn Statement). The Government believes that it can save £1.2bn over the remainder of the CSR period by moving more public services online. And given Liam’s track record at the IT Reform Group, which has saved close to £600m by working with departments to disaggregate ‘black box’ contracts, it will be hoping he can deliver again at GDS.