Home Office seeking technology COO reporting to CTO

The Home Office is looking for a Chief Operating Officer for its technology directorate to report to Chief Technology Officer Sarah Wilkinson and help the department create a “radically new and improved platform for the delivery of technology”.

The new role will directly manage approximately 100 staff including new graduates and apprentices in the 1,200 strong technology function, and will be “responsible for the management of Home Office Technology as a business across all its departments” according to a specification advertising the post.

How the UK government delivers technology services has been radically transformed over the course of the last parliament, according to the job advertisement, and as such a knowledge of “niche suppliers with deep subject matter expertise” is required as the Home Office’s large multi-year contracts expire and it looks to create the new platform of delivery.

The Home Office Technology Directorate advert states: “Historically, incentive structures in our commercial relationships with large systems suppliers and integrators have been such that innovation has been low, and risk-aversion high. The net effect is that many of our platforms are now somewhat obsolete, and opportunities to leverage the potential digital evolution have been missed. This creates a challenge, but also an opportunity for a radical reinvention of the technology landscape, and a move to a hugely more sophisticated and functionally-rich set of services at a much more effective price point.”

The new Chief Operating Officer role will lead the restructure of Home Office Technology and oversee a recruitment drive to attract new talent and help the department “become an exemplar in the delivery of government technology”.

Sarah Wilkinson(top image) was appointed Home Office CTO in December 2014, replacing the retiring Denise McDonagh. The former Credit Suisse head of corporate systems technology started her new post in February, and will be a keynote speaker at the CIO Summit in September.