Richard Steel has been named president of the Society of Information Technology Management, the professional association for public-sector IT managers.
Newham Borough Council's chief information officer was confirmed in the role at the society's AGM held at the British Library.
Steel has been at Newham Council since 1989 and previously worked for Morgan Grenfell (now Deutsche Bank). He is also a member of the Identity and Passport Service local government advisory board.
Writing on the Socitm president's blog on Thursday, Steel said: "I also feel honoured to now be president of such a well-respected organisation that has achieved so much in its history, and optimistic about our future."
Steel replaces head of information services at Belfast City Council, Rose Crozier, as president. Jos Creese, chair of research group Socitm Insight, was elected as third vice president alongside Steve Hopson and Steve Palmer.
Socitm recently formed the local government CIO council to represent the interests of local governments to the main CIO Council.
Talkback
is written into his MoU with Microsoft.
This is the same man who originated the term "doing a Newham" - ie the process of feigning interest in Linux to get, ahem, 'preferential arrangements' with Microsoft.
This is the same man who, in line with Newhams MoU with Microsoft, starred in Microsoft's "Get the Facts" roadshow.
As Dr John Pugh MP has stated, "Microsoft is *very* close to the UK Government, and they intend to stay there".
Richard Steel's appointment as President of Socitm is a very canny play from the multiply-convicted monopolist.
Of course the contractual obligation to promote Microsoft in the UK Public Sector will not affect either his credibility, or his bias-free ability to perform this new role, nobody could possibly think that, could they?
More of the adventures of Richard here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/28/socitm-chief-apologises-leak
Oh, and did we forget to mention that Mr Steel is a New LaBliar darling? Part of this rotten governments love affair with Microsoft that costs the taxpayer ten *billion* pounds per annum in failed and failing IT projects?
Roll on the general election, where *all* the opposition parties now have a policy on Open Source software...
When I said
"Richard Steel's appointment as President of Socitm is a very canny play from the multiply-convicted monopolist."
I accidentally missed a few words! I meant to say:
"Richard Steel's appointment as President of Socitm would be a very canny play from the point of view of a hypothetical multipli-convicted serial monopolist."
I wouldn't want to inadvertently give the impression that any hypothetical 'multipli-convicted' serial monopolist may have at any time, or in any way, had anything to do with anyone in the UK Public Sector's career progress. That would be absurd, not to mention unthinkable in the UK.
Thanks for those comments.
Mr Steel and Newham have indeed have had an interesting past and have their critics in the open source community which we have covered on ZDNet.co.uk.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39238434,00.htm
Some recent reporting from Computer Weekly that the borough's ten year deal with Microsoft had hit a rough patch around migrating to Vista is interesting and worth checking out for sure.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/09/25/226960/lack-of-third-party-apps-delays-newhams-vista-roll-out.htm
Thanks for the links - fascinating...
Ingrid Marson's report was very interesting, and if anything MS have got much more desperate since 2005, although now their marketing department is pretending very hard to be 'friendly' with Open Source, always a sign of their classic 'Embrace, extend, extinguish' approach being brought into play.
The report from Computer Weekly was eye-opening too. Especially this direct quote from Socitm's new President:
"But it is not just Microsoft, it is our problem as well. We really needed to plan with Microsoft much earlier and lobby software suppliers to get their applications ready"
So, it's his job to 'plan with Microsoft' and to lobby the rest of the industry on Microsoft's behalf, it it?
Should Public Sector MoU's really contain this kind of stuff? Might explain the reluctance to release it I guess. Let's hope someone FOI's it...