Thursday, 2 July 2009

Help beat this Microsoftie!

Here’s an interview with Phil Pavitt, who will shortly be moving to the HMRC, which I’m expecting will be one of the most transformative events in Government IT this year, if not decade!


The Local CIO Council is meeting at the School of Government on Thursday, and there is a joint meeting of the Local and Central CIO Councils here on Friday.

Christine Connelly, the NHS CIO, was our after dinner speaker on Wednesday evening. We were impressed with her candour and refreshingly open approach. All the questions were about how the local public sector can engage effectively with what’s generally seen as an immovable public sector silo, and she convinced us that change is afoot. If she’ll at least participate in the CIO Council, unlike her predecessor, that will be a step in the right direction.

In the bar, afterwards, Jos Creese, Glyn Evans, Martin Ferguson and I chatted about how to challenge (many of) our peers to engage more proactively in driving Government transformation, and how to encourage the next generation of leaders – fired up and ready to take-on and change the world – to take-over from our generation, and those of us who persist in seeing ourselves as technologists, rather than business leaders. I observed that, unlike many who seem to prefer to sit on the sidelines criticising and throwing brickbats, some of us find the time to get involved, are prepared to stick our heads above the parapet and work for change, but someone else observed that we all are becoming weary, which I think is possibly true!


I see that Glyn Moody is calling-on his colleagues for back-up to counter the not inconsiderable resources that this “Microsoftie” can bring to bear next week’s debate!


Speaking of Microsoft, this article is about its Data Centre developments to support Azure and Cloud services, I guess, but not the Government Cloud?

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