The Cabinet Office, the UK government department that supports the Prime Minister and the cabinet, has appointed a new technology head to leads it push for efficiency across government.

Conall Bullock, the new chief digital officer (CDO), will take responsibility for the departnment’s in-house technology as well as emerging dicital programs in a rold which will include the old roles of chief information officer (CIO) and chief technology officer (CTO) in a role that will see him taking responsibility for the department’s in-house technology team and emerging digital programmes.

Government influence

The Cabinet Office, under minister Francis Maude, has been hugely influential. Its programs have attempted to shift the UK public sector away from monolithic outsourced tech projects that have had a terrible failure rate, towards shared services and a streamlined procurement process, along with cloud services and open source.

Bullock, who has held IT leadership roles in the private and charity sector, took up his position at the beginning of this month, after a recruitment process which looeked for a candidate with a proven record in delivering digital business transformation programs.

“This role is about moving government away from outsourced services driven by legacy systems,” said the job specification. “The CDO will deliver world-class digital services on a modern technological footing based on user needs. It will mean the government bringing high-quality technological capability back in house in order to drive real business transformation.”

Within the Cabinet Office, Bullock’s responsibilities will fall into four categories: 

• development of websites and citizen-focused projects
• technology services like laptops, wi-fi and e-mail
• shared services such as enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• mission critical IT relating to applications and services that are key to specific business units

Perhaps more importantly, he will be expected to lead change across other departments, advising on how technology and digital services are delivered. The Cabinet Office has intervened in many government contracts in the past. 

The job description specifies that he will recruit a ‘mini Government Digital Service’ for digital engagement in the department and an agile delivery team and an architecture unit working on areas like networks and cloud applications. 

The government expects the CDO to “dramatically” reduce dependence on existing legacy systems. Whether he will also be responsible for any subsequent failures only time will tell.