Cabinet Office’s CDDO hunts for new chief digital officer

The Cabinet Office is looking for a new chief digital officer (CDO). In a job advertisement, the Cabinet Office declared that the £190,000 (US$255,000) per annum position would be the most senior digital, data and technology (DDaT) role in central UK government, and is expected to lead a team of 200 specialists.

The director-general level job reports to Alex Chisholm, COO of the Civil Service, with additional oversight from Paul Wilmott, the part-time, non-executive chair of the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), who also serves as chief digital adviser of Lego. Primary duties will include “owning the vision and strategy for digital, data and technology (DDaT)” for government, as well as “providing the professional leadership of the DDaT function, including setting cross-government workforce strategy,” according to the job posting.

The Cabinet Office aims to complete the interview process by the last week of April, with current incumbent Joanna Davinson expected to remain in place until the successor has been appointed.

Sources say that Davinson had no plans to re-apply for the role, and that her short tenure was in line with Cabinet Office expectations when she first took on the role in February 2021. Davinson initially sat on the panel overseeing recruitment for the CDO role, before taking on the job herself, and had been expected to be the day-to-day operational director of the CDDO for “the next 18 months” when she was first appointed. Industry observers noted at the time that the Cabinet Office appeared to find recruitment challenging for the position, with some suggesting that the Cabinet Office was complicating the responsibility for digital leadership.

Since her appointment, Davinson has been responsible for strategy and monitoring the delivery of major programmes, working alongside Tom Read, the chief executive officer of the Government Digital Service (GDS). GDS, which was established in 2011, has focused on the development of products, platforms and services.

“We put the right conditions in place to achieve digital, data and technology transformation at scale by working with departments, and other government functions like commercial, project delivery and security professionals,” said the CDDO on the Gov.UK website, adding that the body is responsible for technology strategy and standards, cross-governmental DDaT performance and assurance, as well as capability development.

Davinson, who has formerly worked as Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer at the Home Office, and held senior consultant, programme and business leader roles at PwC and IBM in Europe and North America, has made a slew of announcements during her spell at the Cabinet Office.

The experienced IT leader has previously highlighted the creation of a sub-board for DDaT within the Civil Service Board, published a transparency standard for algorithms and a domain checking toolset for government bodies, as well as piloting projects on digital identity.

In a blog post just two months into the role, she highlighted that the biggest challenges for the CDDO would be around leading a cross-government community of DDaT professionals and putting “the strategy, standards and assurance mechanisms in place to deliver transformation at scale.” She also highlighted the need to build, support and iterate digital products, platforms and services which could be “built once and used across government.”

The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) was announced in January 2021, with Read joining as the chief executive officer of GDS, and Wilmott and Davinson as chair and chief executive officer of the CDDO, respectively.

The CDDO is responsible for setting DDaT strategy in collaboration with government digital leaders, and monitoring the health of the delivery of major digital and data programmes. Public sector leaders suggest the group is currently trying to improve visibility and oversight within DDaT departments in central government.

The CDDO emerged following the fall-out from a House of Commons Science and Technology report in 2019, in which experts said that the UK government’s digital strategy had failed, owing largely to a lack of leadership. As part of its response to that report, the Government promised to build a “robust” set of criteria to monitor the progress of digital projects.

The Cabinet Office’s hunt for a new CDO isn’t the only senior IT role for which the civil service is currently recruiting, with the central government department also hiring for a new Chief Digital Information Officer. Nimisha Patel left the post in January 2022 to pursue opportunities in the private sector.

Recruitment closed for the new position on 10^th January with the Cabinet Office currently working through a “long list” of candidates, having initially struggled to attract the right personnel, say sources. Davinson and Daljit Rehal, CDIO for HM Revenue and Customs, are reportedly on the recruitment panel for the new role.

The role advertises that the successful applicant will “build, gel and inspire a large, highly capable, and diverse team of digital, data and technology (DDaT) professionals to deliver excellent digital, data and technology services to over 10,000 users [working with] the highest echelons within government.”

“As an established technology and digital professional, your success in this role will result in an entirely new and innovative technology estate, with new internally and externally facing digital services,” the job advertisement noted.

The Cabinet Office and the CDDO had not responded for comment at the time of writing.