Government’s new IT chief to push talent in public and private sectors

The
newly-appointed head of the Cabinet Office’s e-government unit wants to make
better use of talented IT professionals inside and outside the public sector.

Ian
Watmore, who is in effect
the head of IT for the Government, said that while there are some talented IT staff in the public sector, it
has also lost a lot because of the outsourcing agenda in the 1990s.

"We
have got a mixture of people on both sides of the fence who really know what
they are doing, but we do not bring them together,” he told Personnel Today’s
sister magazine Computer Weekly.

"There
is no holistic career framework for them to follow – we do not get the
training, we do not swap ideas and we do not bring together in a common and
consistent way the business and IT managers."

In
his first interview since starting the job two weeks ago, Watmore said one of his tasks was to be the
"so-called head of the profession for IT" across the Government,
which involves "trying to improve the training, skills development and the
sharing of knowledge and experiences in both the business and the IT people
involved in these projects".

Watmore, formerly of consulting
giant Accenture, will put
in place a training and
career development programme for IT professionals. He also plans to appoint a senior
figure to spread best practice across all departments.

By Daniel Thomas

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