
Liebours reward for a dodgy donation from Meta?
A former Vice President of Public Policy for Facebook is among the new faces to join the board at Britain's telecoms regulator, Ofcom. Lord Richard Allan was selected by Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology to become non-executive director for a four-year period on November 1, the Department …
What does the governance code say though? Appointments should be made by casting your eyes around the House of Lords to find the right sort of chap for the job, one who knows all the other chaps he's regulating and won't cause any kind of fuss?
And however open the process may be, I would imagine there are better telecommunications regulators than a non-exec director of a shop that makes its money selling bras and jumpers.
You'll find it here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80f0fced915d74e33fd44d/Ofcom_Framework_Document_23_June_2016_signed.pdf. Section 5 would seem to be the bit that applies and it (to say the least) a bit spartan on detail.
Rosie
Sometimes former poachers make the best gamekeepers. Tom Wheeler proved remarkably tough on telcos as chairman of the FCC despite having ya Verizon lobbyist.
In any case, a former Facebook guy is unlikely to be sympathetic to telco rent-seeking. His Cisco past would be more relevant as to conflicts of interest.
appointment to these sorts of jobs,
After all with these high profile jobs, you dont want the likes of some spotty oink from cheap university to get it, or maybe a two bit reporter from a highly read tech reporting website.
No, lets hand to Lord horsey who went to the right school, played cricket for the right team, and is generally a good egg who wont make waves.
Strangely, you'll find lots of these sorts of people in all the top quangos, who either arrive via the revolving door from 'industry' or happen to have gone to the same school/university as the people making the recruiting decision. the fact that they're utterly useless in the position makes no difference as they'll be moved to another quango/comittee/inquiry before 2 years is up.
This sort of chap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Powell,_Baron_Powell_of_Bayswater