Andrew Pinder

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Andrew Pinder CBE (born 1947) holds the post of Chairman of Becta, the government agency, funded by DfES which oversees the e-strategy for Education and supports information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning in schools and colleges. He has held this post since January 2006. He has held many executive posts in the public and private sector relating to IT.

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[edit] Other positions

  • Entrust, a secure messaging and authentication company, as senior Vice President since 30 October 2006, but had been a member of the board of directors since November 2004. Of his promotion, the CEO said: "We were thrilled to have his counsel and expertise on our board of directors, and by joining us he can help lead our global government efforts on projects such as the move to e-passports, national ID cards and securing citizen identities and information."[3]
  • Intel Global Advisory Board, as member since January 2006.[2]
  • Gov3, an ICT consulting company (focusing on international ICT-enabled public sector reforms) staffed by former members of the Office of the e-Envoy, President since it was founded in 2004 (till mid 2007).[5]

[edit] e-Envoy

Andrew Pinder's most high profile position was as the e-Envoy between October 2000 and August 2004, when he was responsible directly to the Prime Minister for co-ordinating the development of the knowledge economy in the UK.[6]

He became the temporary e-Envoy when the previous e-Envoy, Alex Allan, resigned in October 2000, and was subsequently chosen for the permanent position in January 2001 over 150 other applicants.[7]

In this role, he gave a speech at the CBI in November 2001,[8] and spoke at a Microsoft-sponsored Government Leaders Conference in Seattle in April 2002, where he famously announced that the government's target of putting all services online by 2005 could cost 800,000 public sector employees their jobs.[9]

He oversaw the rushed implementation in 2001 of the Government Gateway, a project for putting all the government services on-line, which was built by Microsoft in just 15 weeks and initially locked out all browsers except Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. He defended this by claiming that the limitation applied only to the part "which allows citizens and businesses to enrol for services. [But] once enrolled, they can submit transactions from any operating system, since XML - the language used - is totally platform independent."[10]

The deal also involved Microsoft using UK government intellectual property to build products for other governments in order to recoup some of the costs of building the technology. The rate of return was to the tune of 22% of their gross sales of the intellectual property, which Pinder hoped would "give us quite a lot of money".[11] This hope was reiterated by the a minister for the Cabinet Office as late as January 2003.[12]

Pinder appeared before the Public Accounts Committee on 13 May 2002[1], 12 June 2002[2] and 3 May 2002[3], where the Edward Leigh MP was "surprised by the woolly answers"[4]

[edit] Other previously held positions

  • Citibank Head of European Operations and Technology, then Head of Global Operations for Citibank’s Global Transactional Services business, between 1995 to 1999.[4]
  • Prudential Assurance, Director of Systems and Business Operations from 1990 to 1994.[4]
  • A partner in a venture capital firm and carried out a number of management consultancy assignments for the British government.[2]
  • Director of information technology at the Office of Inland Revenue. Employed there for 18 years until 1990.[13]

[edit] Quotes

Typically [teachers who run IT] would be people who have a real passion about Open Source — as if open source is any different from any other software — it's just the pricing structure is different, that's all. But they have a passion. It's a religion, it's a real belief, and again they have a belief about bits of technology that are going to change things. What they don't do, however, is organize things properly.

At a seminar on the future of e-learning in October 2006[14]

The demand proved extremely large and world-wide, even contributing to an overload of the Internet services in the London area. By working together, 9 Government sites managed to weather unprecedented demand and served up 200,000 copies of the dossier on the day. Over a million in total were distributed including via media sites. UK online played an important part in this joint effort.

October 2002 monthly report from Office of the e-Envoy[15]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Register of Board members' interests. Becta (January 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-17.
  2. ^ a b c d Andrew Pinder CBE. United Utilities. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.
  3. ^ Entrust (30 October 2006). "Former UK e-Envoy Andrew Pinder Joins Entrust to Lead Government Initiatives". Press release. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.
  4. ^ a b c Management & board of directors. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
  5. ^ about gov3 > consultants. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
  6. ^ Becta's board. Becta. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.
  7. ^ "New e-envoy named!", 31 January 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-23. 
  8. ^ "CBI seeks to restore credibility", BBC News, 4 November 2001. Retrieved on 2006-11-20. 
  9. ^ Lettuce, John. "E-government could cost 800,000 jobs, says e-envoy", The Register, 14 May 2002. Retrieved on 2006-11-23. 
  10. ^ Andrew Pinder. "Government Gateway is not a 'Microsoft puppet'", The Observer. 
  11. ^ Public Accounts Committee - Examination of Witnesses(Questions 80-99) (12 June 2002).
  12. ^ Douglas Alexander (16 January 2006). E-services - Westminster Hall Debates. Hansard. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
  13. ^ Error on call to Template:cite press release: Parameter title must be specified
  14. ^ The future of e-Learning (16 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-17.
  15. ^ Lettuce, John. "E-envoy declares broadband Britain a success, claims credit", The Register, 9 October 2002. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.