The McCue Interview: DWP CIO Joe Harley

CIO jobs don't come much more challenging than at one of Whitehall's biggest central government departments, where staff refer to the work carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as "the daily miracle".

To put that into context, "the daily miracle" involves making 13 million benefits and pensions payments every day, with a hundred billion pounds flowing through the DWP's systems each year to its 20 million customers.

"It's really huge," says amiable Glaswegian Joe Harley, CIO at the DWP, sitting in his office at a rather grand DWP building tucked away just off the Strand. "It's a big IT infrastructure, crucial applications that absolutely have to deliver day in, day out. Think of the consequences of people who are unemployed not getting their benefits. It's got to be totally reliable."

The DWP has around 2,000 sites up and down the UK, including all Job Centre Plus offices, pension centres and other agencies it is responsible for. There are 120,000 internal users to support and the department has the largest Fujitsu estate in the world, with 35 mainframe computers.

Joe Harley's CV
2004 - present: DWP IT director general and CIO
2000 - 2004: ICI Paints, CIO
1998 - 2000: BP, global IT vice president
1996 - 1998: BP Exploration and Downstream Europe, CIO
1993 - 1996: BP Alaska, IT director
1988 - 1993: BP Glasgow, regional IT manager Europe
1977 - 1988: Britoil, various IT and managerial positions

Harley left his role as global CIO for ICI Paints for the DWP job just under two years ago, after a long career in the private sector that included a spell based in Anchorage, Alaska for BP, the company where he has spent most of his professional life.

He started off with a degree in IT and operational research but has climbed up the corporate ladder with the help of extensive business training and qualifications as his career progressed.

"I've been to business school and did a six-week compressed business administration course at the University of Michigan in the US, which BP put me through, and I've done executive programmes at Stanford in California," says Harley.

His career hasn't also been restricted to IT and included a spell as a trading manager buying and selling oil on the open markets and speculating in trading and options.

Given his strong commercial background it begs the question why Harley took the plunge - and no doubt pay cut - to work in the public sector with the DWP. He admits the scale of the job was a challenge he could not resist.

He says: "I was just taken with the sheer scale of it, the big challenge that was needed to be done. It was and still is one of the biggest CIO change jobs in Europe today so I found that hard to refuse. The other reason, to be honest, was I was taken with the public service and the idea of providing something back to the community. So I like to feel I'm making a contribution."

Harley's big challenge is to help the DWP deliver the modernisation behind the government's welfare reform agenda as well as hitting efficiency targets as part of the Gershon Review, which means cutting the department's £1.2bn IT bill and headcount.

Already in his time at the DWP he has renegotiated major contracts with BT and EDS - reducing the annual spend with EDS from £700m to £520m - and cut the IT headcount from 1,200 to 450.

Harley sees the outsourcing trend continuing in the future but alongside a ramping up of the internal capability of the people left in the internal IT department. The DWP won't, he says, be a place for someone who wants to develop a career in application development.

He says: "It will be a smaller but much more highly capable group on the inside and the outsourcing of more and more of the commodity services. There must always be a place for highly capable people on the inside. If you don't have that on the inside then you're not likely to get what you need from the outside."

Harley himself is on the executive team of the DWP, chairs various change committees and is a sponsor for the development of the department's business strategy. He also works across government with all the major suppliers for big cost reduction targets for all departments on behalf of Whitehall's CIO Council.

He says: "It's a really busy job. It's hugely demanding but very rewarding."

His day starts at about eight in the morning and he tries to wrap up by seven in the evening, although he then often has dinner with suppliers. But he is fiercely protective of his weekends when he travels back to his family in Scotland where, aside from relaxing with them, his one little "pleasurette" is his Parkhead season ticket for watching his beloved Celtic play.

All of which leaves the question of Harley's future ambitions. He says his whole career has been "the transformation business" and dealing with underperforming IT departments.

He adds: "When the day ever comes that the ship is in a steady state and it's just keeping the engine room going then it's probably time for somebody else to do it. I'm up for extraordinary results, I'm not up for average. After all, who ever heard of 'Alexander the Average'?"