If there’s one job that could be described as challenging in the current climate it would be leader of the UK public sector division of the leading SITS company in the UK public sector market. HP has announced that Stuart Bladen has taken up that role, taking the place of acting UK PS head, Richard Trevor, who was in the role for nigh on 12 months.
The public sector accounts for a significant proportion of the HP’s SITS revenues; by our calculations, just over half. But revenues from the sector have been on the decline for the last couple of years, as a result of changing attitudes and behaviours around IT procurement and management across Whitehall.
Bladen has been with HP for seven years; he ran HP EMEA’s Application and Business Services business and, most recently, the Benefits and Tax sub-sector and DWP account within UK PS for the past 18 months. Previously Bladen had roles at Hitachi Consulting and Unisys in their public sector businesses. The challenge in his new role will be to align, as closely as possible, HP’s UK PS approach with the UK Government’s ICT strategies and policies, in order to retain as much of its central government business as possible, while also trying to make an entree into local and devolved government organisations.