This article is more than 1 year old

Hey, Britain! Meet Mr Maxwell, our new National Tech Advisor

CTO shuffles out of UK.gov Digi Services for £140,000

The government's chief technology officer, Liam Maxwell, is escaping the Digital Services wing to take up the newly created post of National Technology Advisor.

Under the promotion, the former head of IT at private school Eton will provide consultancy on Blighty's digital economy.

Maxwell, who is leaving the post earlier than planned*, will work with Matt Hancock, Cabinet Office minister, and Ed Vaizey, minister for the digital economy at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The chief techie is regarded as one of the key architects of the government's spend controls - any projects costing more than £100m were not supposed to be allowed - and the push to introduce open tech standards.

He was also parachuted in to oversee the digitisation of the rural payments project, eight weeks before it was scrapped and farmers returned to pen and paper for claiming government subsidies.

Maxwell came into the government during 2011 in an advisory role, as the coalition sought to put some political clear water between it and the previous Labour government's projects - myriad expensive, failed projects with very large American vendors and systems integrators.

He was paid between £140,000 to £145,000 annually at GDS, but the salary for his latest role is not yet publicly available. ®

Bootnote

* Maxwell joined the Government Digital Service in 2011 as CTO. Prior to that he been at Eton as head of computing. Maxwell signed a new contract with GDS in 2014 that was due to keep him in situ until at least 2018.

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