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Christine Connelly, CIO for Health, has resigned and will be leaving the Department of Health at the end of the month. Despite a “fascinating and challenging time” at the DoH she has decided now is the time to go, rather than put herself forward for one of the Director General posts, which will be fewer in number after the department’s reorganisation. We rather suspect the tough time she has been given by the Public Accounts Committee and others over progress on the National Programme for IT in the NHS (a.k.a. the poisoned chalice) recently will have contributed to her decision.
Christine will be replaced on an interim basis by Katie Davis. Katie is ‘on loan’ from the Cabinet Office where she has been Executive Director, Operational Excellence, in the Efficiency and Reform Group since 2010. Before that she was Executive Director of Strategy at the Identity and Passport Service and Director of the Government IT Profession in the Cabinet Office. In fact, we’ve known Katie since before that, when she worked with Richard Granger at NHS Connecting for Health as a secondee from former LSP Accenture. As such, she’s no stranger to NPfIT and ought to know exactly what she’s getting into! Now, however, she is very much part of the Cabinet Office and her close links with the ERG could signal a tougher time ahead for SITS suppliers, particularly CSC, whose future as a supplier to the Programme still hangs in the balance (see CSC flat in UK despite NHS IT woes).
