Local CIO Council

Members of the Local CIO Council are Socitm members drawn from UK regions and the different types of local authority. They are:

• Jos Creese (Chair)*, Head of IT, Hampshire County Council
• Glyn Evans (Deputy Chair)*, Assistant to the Chief Executive on Transformation, Birmingham City Council
• Peter Bole, Head of ICT Commissioning, Kent County Council
• Kay Brown, Head of IT, South Lanarkshire Council
• John Callan, Head of IT, Liverpool City Council
• Rose Crozier, Head of IT, Belfast City Council
• Martin Ferguson, Head of Policy, Socitm
• Vic Freir, Head of ICT Services, Somerset County Council
• Noelle Godfrey, Head of IT Strategy & Architecture, Cambridgeshire County Council
• Mick Phythian, ICT Manager, Ryedale District Council
• Dylan Roberts, Head of ICT, Leeds City Council      
• Steve Sankey, Head of IT, Nottinghamshire County Council
• Geoff Connell, Chief Information Officer, London Borough of Newham 
• Angela Waite, Head of ICT & Central Services, Canterbury City Council
• Tonino Ciuffini, Head of ICT, Warwickshire County Council
• David Picknett, Head of Information Services, Cornwall Council
• Paul Featherstone, Newcastle City Council
  
• Tom Rivett, Head of Information and Technology, South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive
• David Tosh, Swansea City and County Council.

Representing Office of HMG CIO & SIRO, Cabinet Office:

• Rachel Gentry, Deputy Director, ICT Strategy & Policy

Programme Manager:

• Mark Brett, Head of Information Assurance, Socitm
  

* member of the CIO Council

Work programme

The work programme for the Local CIO Council comprises four strands:

• Public services efficiency
• Information assurance/management
• Delivering local public services outcomes (joining-up)
• Government infrastructures.
  

Peter Bole

Peter Bole is Head of ICT Commissioning at Kent County Council. He is responsible for ICT strategy and identifying and sourcing the council's business and ICT solutions. Starting his career in computer programming and ICT training, Peter joined Kent County Council as a financial systems developer in 1990. When a single ICT function was established across the council in 1997, he became Head of ICT Service Delivery and was responsible for the rationalisation of the then multiple ICT teams, networks and technical architectures. He also worked on the design of an ICT delivery model that would improve the alignment of ICT with the strategic objectives of the council, and established the discrete roles of CIO (Commissioning) and CTO (Operations).

Kay Brown

Kay Brown is Head of ICT in South Lanarkshire Council, one of the largest Unitary Authorities in Scotland. She has worked in Local Government since 1991. Prior to joining Local Government she was employed in the private sector with BOC, Alexander Stenhouse and Honeywell Bull and has held IT management posts since the mid 1970s. In her current position Kay is responsible for a staff of 160 delivering all ICT services to the Council - everything from the switchboard to solution deployment and business change. A member of the Scottish Socitm Committee for 10 years she is also a Fellow of BCS and a CITP.

Jos Creese

Jos Creese is the Head of IT for Hampshire County Council. He oversees the IT enabled change programmes for the council and the support for a range of partnership projects with other public service organisations. In addition he is involved in a number of national groups, working with Socitm, the National CIO Council and the Corporate IT Forum. Jos has over 20 years' experience in IT management. He joined Hampshire CC in 2002, following an earlier career in IT at district, unitary and county level, having started out in IT in the Department of Health.

Rose Crozier

Rose Crozier is Head of Information Services in Belfast City Council and has worked in IT in Local Government for 24 years. In her current position Rose is responsible for the day to day operation of the IT service in Belfast City Council and the development of the e-government programme focussed on service improvement and efficiencies. Rose is particularly proud of Belfast's partnership with the London Borough of Newham and LASC and the ongoing success of the LACRM product. Rose holds a Master of Science degree in Information Systems Management and hopes this year to complete her Doctorate in Philosophy researching Performance Improvement through effective deployment of technology.

Glyn Evans

Glyn Evans has almost thirty years local government experience. Initially working on the development and maintenance of software applications, he gained his first managerial role in 1987. After experience with several local authorities, in 2003 Glyn was appointed Director of Business Solutions & IT with Birmingham City Council with the remit to drive forward a business transformation programme across the Council. He has led the development of the Council's approach to transformational change and in the creation of a joint venture company (with Capita) to support the change programme. Following this, Glyn took on the role of Corporate Director of Business Change to ensure business transformation is adopted, embedded and implemented across the Council.  This has included overseeing the development of a comprehensive methodology for supporting business transformation, CHAMPS2.

Glyn chairs the Society of IT Management's Futures Group and is a member of the CIO Council, an advisory body established by the UK Government's Cabinet Office, the local CIO Council and the Local Government Delivery Council, a group established to support the "joined up" delivery of services provided by local and central government.

Noelle Godfrey

Noelle Godfrey is Head of IT at Cambridgeshire County Council where she has overall responsibility for the provision of  ICT services within the authority.  Noelle has over twenty years experience in public sector IT and previous roles have included IT support and service management and large-scale project management. Current change projects include the implementation of a Voice-Over-IP based telephony system for the County and support for IT enabled service  transformation across the authority with a particular emphasis on flexible and remote working.

Vic Freir

Vic Freir is Head of Information and Communications Technology at Somerset County Council. He has over 35 years of experience in the public sector and has worked in English and Welsh authorities at district, county and unitary levels. His involvement in financial administration, audit and, for the last 20 years, ICT management has given him a comprehensive local authority background. Vic is a chartered member of the British Computer Society and has championed the shared services agenda for the past 10 years through leadership of the Somerset Online consortium and latterly with Southwest One, currently the largest strategic partnership of its type in the country.

Mick Phythian

Mick Phythian is currently ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire. He is responsible for the e-government strategy and related issues. He has over 30 years experience in public and private sector IT, from programming through project management. He has an MA in IT Management from Sheffield University that involved a dissertation on electronic service delivery, which was later written up and published in a leading academic journal. He is currently researching electronic government at the Centre for Computing & Social Responsibility at De Montfort University Leicester towards a PhD. Mick is on the Yorkshire & Humber regional executive of Socitm and was for its lifetime involved with Yorkshire & Humber Connects, the regional e-government body. He was also involved in the Government IT Profession Working Group.

Dylan Roberts

Dylan Roberts has been Head of ICT at Leeds City Council since 2004, where he leads 345 IT professionals delivering operational services and IT capital programs. He is also responsible for facilitation and development of ICT enabled business strategies. He has been recognised, by awards, for the transformation of ICT Service in Leeds into best practice/value for money organisation. Dylan is on the Yorkshire & Humber regional executive of Socitm and chairs the West Yorkshire CIO group. He has over twenty years of experience in public sector ICT, and holds an MBA qualification. Prior to joining Leeds CC, he was Head of ICT at Denbighshire County Council.

Steve Sankey

Steve Sankey is Head of ICT at Nottinghamshire County Council, where he is responsible for all IT aspects, which covers around 240 IT professionals, and a budget approaching £15m. He has over 30 years experience in the IT industry, across a number of public sector organisations having gained first class honours in Mathematics and is a chartered Information technology professional (BCS CITP).

Angela Waite

Angela Waite is Head of ICT & Central Services at Canterbury City Council. She has over 20 years of experience in ICT management. She started in Central Electricity Generating board as application developer and systems support. Subsequently she has worked with Rochester City Council through local government reorganisation to Medway Council, where she helped create and manage the ICT team, developed service level agreements and performance measures using the Socitm Key Performance Indicators. Angela joined Socitm's Best Value Group and was then elected chair of its successor, the Performance Management Group, in December 2002. She became Socitm president in 2005. She is on the programme board delivering the Kent Connects partnership and is an accredited IDeA peer.

David Picknett

David Picknett is Head of Information Services at Cornwall Council - one of the newly formed Unitary Authorities.  He is responsible for all aspects of ICT provision and leads a team of 230 staff.  Prior to his current role David was the Programme Manager on the Unitary transition and before that was Deputy Head of IT at Cornwall County Council.   David moved to Cornwall in 2002 having previously held roles in the private sector at Deloitte, Safeway and T-Mobile where he managed major business change programmes covering ERP and Customer Management.'

Tim Rivett

Tim Rivett is Head of Information & Technology at South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive. He has over 10 years experience of the transport sector and is responsible for paper and electronic information products as well as provision and support of technology services including systems in use by bus operators. Prior to his public sector career he worked as a consultant in IT outsourcing and systems integration.

He is currently chair of the Passenger Transport Executive Group's IT committee and deputy chair of RTIG-Inform the public transport information & technology standards body. He has been involved E@SYConnects, the South Yorkshire joint delivery partnership, since its creation and has been the chair since 2005.

John Callan

John's is Head of ICT for Liverpool City Council (LCC), with responsibility for IT governance, including IT Strategy. He is a member of the LCC Community Leadership Team and is responsible for all ICT service provision from BT via Liverpool Direct Ltd. John joined the Bank of Scotland Group (BOS) in 1983.  He rapidly progressed through the organisation, becoming the General Manager for IT in Capital Bank in 1998 and the overall CIO for BOS in 1999, leading a major IT outsourcing to IBM, BT and Xansa, establishing the BOS offshore IT centre in India with TCS for the whole BOS Group and, in 2000, leading the BOS IT integration team as part of the Halifax BOS merger. Following the merger with Halifax in 2001, John has held a number of senior IT roles. He has led UK wide teams ranging from 1000FTE (Service Delivery) to 500FTE (Enterprise Technology and Group Application Services). He has led and implemented major transformation programmes including; BOS/Halifax integration; insourcing of BOS services; Data Centre expansion; Mainframe and Midrange platform consolidation; Telecommunication standardisation; Architecture simplification and establishing central shared services for Application Development and Maintenance. John is active in diversity and inclusion programmes, mentoring graduates from ethnic backgrounds and he is actively involved in Young Enterprise North West. He is a Business Studies graduate of Liverpool John Moore's University and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland.

Martin Ferguson

Martin is Head of Policy for the Society of IT Management (Socitm) - the professional association for people working in information and technology management in the public and third sectors and suppliers to these sectors in the UK. Here, he leads the development and promotion of Socitm's policies and responses to major issues such as the collection and management of personal data and the efficient deployment of resources through shared services, partnerships, outsourcing, self service and flexible working. He sits on a number of national planning and programme boards, including the Implementation Steering Group for the Government's ICT Strategy. Previously he was an Assistant Director at the Improvement and Development Agency, responsible for strategic support of local e-government and service transformation. He is a past president of Socitm and is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham. His local government career spans planning, housing, leisure and recreation, IT and information services. He has also contributed to the British Council's e-governance programmes in Brazil and central Asia and is an external examiner at Henley Management College.