Going Underground

The Register is less than complimentary about HMRC's new CIO, Phil Pavitt, who will take on his role in September this year.

"Phil Pavitt is currently CIO at Transport for London.

It emerged late last year that he was under investigation for alleged irregularities in TfL's hiring policies - Pavitt was a non-exec director of a recruitment firm which found contractors for TfL.

A spokesman for TfL said Pavitt was cleared of all suggestion of wrongdoing.

Pavitt will run a team of 1,400 internal staff, a billion-pound budget and gawd knows how many outsourced contractors. He will be responsible for a two-year transformation programme and play a role influencing inter-department shared services deals.

The advert made clear that the successful candidate would have to transform HMRC's technology. Given the Rev's enviable track record on the tax credit system and of course the missing discs, we can only wish Mr Pavitt well.

Pavitt was CIO at NTL before going underground.

He has also already had a run-in with the Rev's least favourite offshorer, EDS.

At TfL he has overseen big changes in its technology infrastructure, changes to the Oyster contract, and - thank you Phil - the canning of a project to get mobiles working on the Tube."

When Pavitt was at NTL he oversaw the "Harmony" project, which was designed to unify eight billing platforms and 28 CRM databases. It was late and over budget.

Tax does have to be taxing.

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