IT Week's IT leader profile

What does your job entail?
The Isle of Man Government has to provide all essential public services on the island with a budget that is a tiny fraction of the investment enjoyed by local governments on the mainland. My job is to make this possible and we’ve made considerable progress.

If you weren’t in IT, what would you be doing?
Probably something soft and fuzzy like personnel management and development – I’ve always been interested in people.

What is the most ridiculous support request you’ve had from a user?
Does it sound too much of a platitude to say that in the user’s mind a support request is never ridiculous? But I do recall being asked in a job interview once what I would say if the chief executive demanded a cream laptop to match the colour on the walls of his dining room at home.

Which person do you most admire in the IT industry?
Bill Gates for the vision of affordable computing at work and in the home, and Tim Berners-Lee for the vision of pervasive information access.

Which technology has had the biggest impact on your working life?
The water cooler in the corner of the office – it is amazing how many meaningful conversations can arise in informal ways.

What has been the most over-hyped technology in the past year?
The iPhone. Apple is great at style and PR and the iPhone is sexy, but it’s a solution looking for a problem.

Is now a good time for people to enter the profession?
There’s never been a better time. Web 2.0 is enormously exciting and is going to have a radical impact. It’s definitely a different profession to the one I entered in 1968.

Are you a BlackBerry enthusiast?
BlackBerry has an evangelist buzz around it that suggests it’s unique and a must-have. People use them to project an image that says, “Look at me, I’m so indispensable that I need to be contactable on a 24/7 instant response basis”. There a plenty of practical alternatives out there. We use O2’s Xda for mobile calls and email, as our hand-held e-mail and phone.

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