Wanted: ID cards CIO

The Home Office is looking to recruit a new CIO to oversee the ID cards programme and the National Identity Register (NIR).

Recruitment for the post has yet to begin formally but responsibilities include developing and delivering IS and IT strategy for the Identity and Passport Services agency and the NIR, and development of identity services and systems integration.

The Home Office has also initiated a shake-up and complete overhaul of its own IT systems and strategy as part of a review of the failing department outlined in a reform action plan, unveiled by Home Secretary John Reid this week.

As part of the action plan, new Home Office CIO Vincent Geake, who was appointed in February 2006, will be tasked with improving the accuracy of data and making it easier for the department's various agencies to share information.

Geake will work to join up information and IT systems across the department and develop a Home Office-wide IT strategy by December 2006.

Geake's background is in electrical engineering and he was previously head of the government's lorry road-user charging programme, and before that CEO of specialist navigation company Yeoman Group.

The wide-ranging From Improvement to Transformation action plan outlines a programme of "radical reform" and also promises that a "high quality" IT director will be in place in each of the Home Office's operating businesses by the end of 2006.

Home Secretary John Reid said in a statement: "This will not be an easy task. This is the start of a long-term programme of reform which will require consistency, commitment and endurance."