New government deputy CTO starts this week

Former Credit Suisse chief information officer Magnus Falk has this week started his new role as government deputy chief technology officer, one of 100 senior digital specialists brought into government over the past year.


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By Winnie.Agbonlahor

05 Sep 2014

Falk (pictured), who worked for financial advisers Credit Suisse from 1996 to 2012, became deputy to government CTO Liam Maxwell on Tuesday, 2 September.

The Cabinet Office announced his appointment in a press release this week, which revealed other new appointments made over the last 12 months.

New recruits so far have been deployed to departments including the Cabinet Office, Home Office, DWP, Ministry of Justice, HMRC, BIS and Defra.

They include Ian Sayer, new MoJ CTO, who was global CIO at home appliance company Electrolux; Mark Dearnley, new HMRC Chief Digital and Information Officer, formerly CIO of Vodafone; Paul Shelter, new MoJ chief digital officer, formerly CTO for banking at Oracle; Laura Dewis, new deputy director digital publishing at the ONS, formerly head of online commissioning at The Open University; as well as the DWP’s new CDO Kevin Cunnington, previously global head of online for Vodafone.

Mike Bracken, executive director of digital in the Cabinet Office, wrote in his blog that “rather than adopting traditional recruitment processes, we’ve proactively sought out good candidates and successfully placed them into roles throughout government.”

He added: “We’ve also introduced specialist recruitment agencies into the government supply chain, who have successfully identified high calibre candidates for these roles.

“Both of those things are common in the private sector, but it’s something government isn’t traditionally known for – at least when it comes to digital.

“Finally, we’ve successfully attracted people who hadn’t thought about working for government before, largely by tapping into candidates’ latent desire to do something for public good. Being able to show them the impact teams like GDS and MoJ digital services have made has been critical; it proves they can make a significant difference to the way government works. We aren’t encouraging these people to become ‘traditional’ civil servants, we’re encouraging them to change the civil service.”

The e-bulletin associated with this news story referred to Magnus Falk as the "new CTO" instead of the "new deputy CTO". This was an error.

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