Ex-DWP tech boss calls out former colleagues
Put those claws away dear
Ensure Ease of Recovery with Asigra’s Agentless Software
James Gardner has left his job at chief technology officer at the Department of Work and Pensions to join a start-up, and left the world a rather catty leaving note.
Gardner then put up a rather bitchy blog post which appears to attack his former colleagues for blocking his work.
The post is styled as a letter to his replacement and warns: "There are lots of less senior people who can do things to stop innovation. They will never deliberately disobey and obstruct, but they will certainly go-slow if they don’t like or don’t understand what you’re doing."
Gardner warns his replacement that he, or she, will need "to build your innovation effort from the bottom up as well as from the top down. The little people at the front line are just as important as the ones in the center who make the decisions".
Ahhh, god bless the little people.
Gardner is off to look after non-US business for Spigit. Gardner said he had been a customer of Spigit for some time and that he had been "continuously amazed by the levels of user engagement and quality of ideas obtained through Spigit’s effective crowdsourcing capabilities."
Spigit offers staff community software, so Gardner will have plenty of time to connect with the little people.
Spigit's press release is here and Gardner's blog post here. ®
COMMENTS
wtf
Its a shame they didnt block innovation like the CSA computer systems.
One mans "innovation" is another mans chainsaw enema!
When it comes to IT, DWP is the acronym for Doesnt Work Plonkers!
@ John Smith 19
He was in that role for less than 18 months. He could have very easily stayed, collecting his pension, salary and expenses. But, it appears he left on principle.
(I know it feels good to direct anger at the fat cat directors, but maybe he was one of the good guys.)
He's not in it for the money
I would like to suggest: Gardner left a high paying, prestigious position because he loves computing and wasn't allowed to do his job.
He could have very easily carried on, kept the bosses happy and continued to collect his (not unsubstantial!) director's salary.
His remarks about the people less senior may sound catty, but it's unintended:
* He was *literally* the most senior person at DWP (a massive organization), in terms of IT. * He was probably referring to the endless bureaucracy and committee panels. The consensus is that he knew he was simply a puppet - someone with academic standing, so that the DWP PR machine could say: 'look, we are really committed to innovation! Under our munificent leadership, you will see the most innovative innovation, ever!'
He may have wanted changes to improve efficiency. Well, what if this conflicted with more "junior" people who were set in their ways... or (God-forbid) had cosy arrangements with certain companies.
A lot of being a Whitehall civil servant is about:
1. arse kissing
2. talking shite using 'buzzwords' whilst kissing more arse [clues to this are in his Tweets]
Gardner was appointed because of his innovation work in the private sector. Might I suggest that he joined DWP, eager to make changes, but encountered copious amounts of #1 and #2 above.
In the end, he gave up his salary, his expenses, his pension. Everything. Pretty gutsy!
--
Legal disclaimer: all of the above is speculation. I am not saying there is any corruption within Government. I am merely suggesting a hypothesis.
--
@AC 01:09 is referring to http://twitter.com/bankervision/status/27845526963625984
--
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
