Yet another Big Tech exec heads to central government: This time IBMer Dan Bailey in 6-month stint

IBM UK and Ireland exec Dan Bailey has been seconded to the Cabinet Office for a six-month contract as interim chief technology officer. His tasks are to include the creation of a pan-government CTO council for the cloud, raising questions of a conflict of interest. At the time of publication, Bailey still stated on his …

[Anonymous Coward]

I didnt think my opinion could sink much lower

Then I saw they were teamed up with McKinsey.

Joy.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Sensible

If they had someone from Amazon or Microsoft there would be a question of whether they had chosen AWS or Azure based on technical merit or purely for the money

With someone from IBM there is no need to question it

[Chris G]

I bet when Margaret Thatcher got the privatisation ball rolling, she hadn't thought of privatising central govrrnment.

Bit then again....

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

She privatised the cabinet to Alan Waters and I think the idea of Thatcher and Reagan was to outsource central government to McKinsey

[Steve K]

No compelling business case yet?

If they need McKinsey to help them create a "compelling business case", then isn't that akin to saying "Cloud/Hybrid Cloud is the answer, now what's the question?"

I'm not saying it isn't an answer, but if they don't have a compelling business case in mind already then surely all McKinsey will do is create a compelling business case for the Cabinet Office to blow £3m with McKinsey over 8 weeks.....?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM, eh. McKinsey, bleh.

I assume the UK is in the same (sinking) boat as the US. Given that the government isn't able to pay enough to hire top talent, bringing in senior people like Dan Bailey makes begrudging sense.

But using consulting firms like McKinsey almost never does. In the US they are known as Beltway Bandits (the beltway being the ring road around Washington). They exist to give an air of independence to their clients' decisions. But the papers, statistics, and presentations they produce could just as easily be done by civil servants and the imprimatur of Dan Bailey will far exceed that of McKinsey.

Why pay for two expert opinions, especially when only one is truly an expert?

[Denarius]

so suited clerks output will be just like clerks output, but expensive. Normal in the the Wests suicide. The more bureaucrats the better. After all, they know how to run your life and country better than you and citizens.

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM?

The business that missed the cloud, then bought a cloud - SoftLayer - then broke its cloud then bought another cloud - RedHat?

That IBM?

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: IBM?

Yes, that IBM, who continue to push this mythical hybrid-cloud because what they really, really, really want to do is sell you hardware and charge you extremely high prices to connect that expensive hardware to their shitty cloud!