One of the leading proponents of Cloud in the UK public sector has taken the top job in the government ICT hierarchy. Ministry of Justice CIO and chairman of the G-Cloud Delivery Board Andy Nelson is to take the reins as Government CIO on the imminent retirement of incumbent Joe Harley.
The government has repeated what it did with its current head of ICT; appoint a civil servant already in post at a major Department but get them to do it alongside that job. Thus Harley, appointed at the end of January 2011 to take over from departing CIO John Suffolk, is to be succeeded by another ‘part-timer’ – a move that may spark some concern as to how much focus can be applied to this key role.
Katy Ring of analyst firm K2 Advisory commented:
Nelson was recruited in 2009 to meet a job spec that required the winning candidate to "drive a harmonisation, simplification and streamlining agenda, creating a more efficient and effective IT framework".
An Oxford graduate, his CV includes stints as Group Director for Strategic Change and IS at Royal Sun Alliance, Director of computer services at Asda Stores and he was also a management consultant at Accenture when he started his career in 1980.
Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office, and himself a previous Government CIO, said:
Speaking at the Public Sector Enterprise ICT conference in London recently Nelson said that standardising services and moving towards a 'pay as you go' model of procurement would would provide the biggest hurdle to take-up of the G Cloud:
Nelson’s appointment met with approval from other Cloud advocates in the public sector. Chris Chant, G-Cloud Programme Director declared him to be “absolutely the right man for the job while Tonino Ciuffini, Head of ICT at Warwickshire County Council, one of the pioneering local government Cloud users, described him as a “great advocate for G-Cloud”.
Georgina O’Toole of research firm Techmarketview noted:
