UK gets government CTO

The British government today announced it has appointed Liam Maxwell as its chief technology officer or CTO.

UK CTO Liam Maxwell. Source: Esther Dyson

Maxwell will work with the UK Government Digital Service to identify technologies in order to create new digitally delivered public services. He will report to the GDS executive director Mike Bracken.

According to UK government chief operating officer Stephen Kelly, Maxwell will work chief information officer Andy Nelson and department CTOs and Digital Leaders, to achieve the transition to the Digital by Default strategy recently announced by Home Secretary Francis Maude.

Before his appointment, Maxwell was the government deputy chief information officer, and a background in corporate IT.

He is a proponent of the UK G-Cloud strategy, which he says is destroying the enterprise model in government.

This, Maxwell says, is positive and will lead to savings in IT spending.

Currently, the UK spends one per cent of its GDP on IT, a figure Maxwell says is "much too high".

The G-Cloud iniative creates a market place for IT suppliers along the lines of an app store, with a pay as you go model that aims to reduce government procurement costs.

In June this year, the Home Office IT director, Denise McDonagh, said the UK government had realised savings of $250 million by cutting procurement red tape over the past 18 months.