About

“All Posts are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer, or anyone else.”

Hi, I’m Steve Halliday.

I am a public service CIO. Or rather, my formal day job title is “Head of ICT” in Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, one of the Local Government authorities of the UK.

I have an active interest in transformation and incremental improvements created through better business process, systems thinking, information management and IT.

I think IT leadership is like all leadership. You need to create the space for great people to believe they are supported in doing great things – and then they will.

I am the Senior Vice President of Socitm (www.socitm.net), the Society of ICT Leaders in the UK’s public services, which means I am nominated to become president in April 2013. A notion that fills me with pride and terror in equal measure. I also am a member of the national Identity Assurance Programme Board (IDAPB) and of the Local Government Delivery Council (LGDC).

Before re-joining the public sector in 2006, I worked in the consulting, outsourcing and hosting business (we didn’t call it “cloud” then) for Serco, ITNET and KPMG.  I’ve been a transition manager, business sector partner and programme manager for many household brands, like Coca Cola and Cadbury. And way back, I ran the IT team in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London. That’s where I studied social anthropology – which has provided more insights for me than most of the technology and management training I have inflicted on myself.

When I’m not musing on the transformational impact of IT, I’ll be on a squash court, in the kitchen, up a mountain or travelling somewhere. And when I am musing on the transformational impact of IT, my wonderful daughters and wife will be explaining to me how much more there is to life – they are usually right (and always wonderful)!

Hand feeding elephants is a lot like providing IT services

– its about mutual respect & trust!