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Dr Sue Black among handful of IT Brits getting New Year gongs

CodeClub founder also gets a nod

Updated

Former Bletchley Park board member Dr Sue Black is among just a handful of IT folk on the UK's 2016 New Year honours list.

Black, an honorary Senior Research Associate in Computer Science at University College London, was made an OBE for "services to technology".

She has been a vocal campaigner for the site, having written a book Saving Bletchley. However, last year Black stepped down as a trust member in protest against the charity's failure to sort out a long-running dispute with the National Museum of Computing.

Clare Frances Sutcliffe, founder of CodeClub, was also made an OBE for services to technology education.

Nick Jennings, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, has been made Companion of the Order of the Bath for his services to computer science and national security science.

Bobby Paton, managing director of Accenture, North East, also received a gong for his "promotion of IT Skills and apprenticeships".

But outside a couple of civil servants, the names of IT folk were few and far between.

Robert Devereux, permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, was knighted. Devereux has been hauled in front of MPs numerous times to account for the failing of the Universal Credit IT programme.

Just £34m of IT investment will be re-usable from more than £600m spent on the Universal Credit car-crash IT programme "if" a digital version of the system ever arrives, MPs have said.

The honours list has come under fire this year, with accusations of crony-ism due to some 30 Tory supporters being rewarded. ®

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