Martin Bellamy, the head of Connecting for Health (CfH), is to leave his position to move to the Cabinet Office where he will work on the roll out of the government's G-Cloud initiative.
Bellamy had only been in his position at CfH for nine months. He was brought in as part of an effort to kick start the £12.7 billion NHS National Programme for IT which has come under fire from MPs and the medical profession alike. The project has failed to deliver on its promised benefits and is behind schedule and over budget. Prior to joining CfH, Bellamy worked for the Department for Work and Pensions since 2003, where his main role was as CIO for the Pension Service.
Following the publication of the Digital Britain report earlier this month, all government departments are to be encouraged to procure new IT services based on a Cloud Computing model while plans for the G-Cloud are formalised. To ensure a policy of IT standardisation is followed and to prevent projects veering away from the new strategy, government CIO John Suffolk is to be given new powers to sign off all major Whitehall IT projects. Bellamy's role will involve formulating and managing frontline implementation issues for the G-Cloud roll out, something that will inevitably be highly complex.
Challenges ahead
“Implementing a G-Cloud will require a mix of strategic and opportunistic supply and demand-side initiatives,” said Steve Hodgkinson of research house Ovum. “These include, for example: building all new data centres in the Cloud Computing mode; using G-Cloud as a delivery platform for selected new applications; and encouraging existing shared services and agency ICT functions to source new computing capacity from the G-Cloud and also to retail cloud applications - with added value such as security vetting, authentication and billing. Measures will also need to be put in place to educate agencies about where, when and how to use both the G-Cloud and public Clouds safely and cost effectively - with careful attention to security and privacy risks.”
“The Cloud is the product of a new model for ICT, so we need fresh thinking about how to harness the value of Cloud Computing and how to create incentives for agencies to collaborate in making the G-Cloud a reality. If implementation of the G-Cloud is viewed simply as an opportunity to mandate agencies to use renovated centralised ICT infrastructure then it is certain to end in tears.”
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