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Story URL: http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39120944,00.htm

New e-gov supremo looks a safe pair of hands
And one tough survivor

By Ron Coates

Published: Wednesday 26 May 2004

The new head of e-government, Ian Watmore, has been described as being low-profile and he is definitely a 'safe pair of hands'.

But he is low-profile only to those - probably most of us - who just haven't been looking in the right direction. He himself doesn't really help the situation - by all accounts he spends a lot of energy to appear non-contentious.

This is what you might expect from a man who has just stepped down as president of the Management Consultants Association. He has said that he's a bit against jargon and his reported statements back this up. But it doesn't get him out of being ever-so-slightly bland.

A life-long Arsenal supporter, he may have had his taste formed in the 70s and 80s, when watching that rather successful team was like watching paint dry. And so back to the government's search for a safe pair of hands, for what is likely to be an advisory rather than direct action role.

His qualifications are better than reasonable. He worked on the implementation of the South African Electoral Commission in 1999. He is chairman of the IT Industry Board of e-skills UK and sits on the Council for Industry and Higher Education and on Business in the Community. In his spare time he is also on the board of the Institute for Sport, the lottery-funded body for helping top-flight UK athletes.

So, it seems he's definitely diplomatic and doesn't upset people on committees – these are all jobs that basically produce unmeasurable results and require an ability to react correctly when the teacher says: "Hands up, all those in favour of good things."

Any suggestion that Watmore is bland and possibly colourless can, however, stop here. It's not just because he was a punk and Sex Pistol fan when at Trinity College, Cambridge – which is a phase that the 45-year-old father of four has definitely left behind.

The report of the tough survivor aspect of Watmore can start in 1999, when he was the Andersen partner who carried the can for the firm in front of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) over the semi-collapse of the firm's contract to computerise National Insurance Records.

In its day, this was one of the biggest government computer project failures. The press was hounding the government and Andersen. The PAC devoted a lot of time to it.

Watmore battled through, Andersen Consulting took a major cash hit, but both emerged with the contract eventually delivered and relations with the government restored.

Around about the same time, Andersen-the-accountants and Andersen-the-consulting-firm had the most acrimonious divorce of an era which saw accountancy firms spinning off their consultancies to make lots of dosh. It may not sound exciting in retrospect but there were billions at stake. It was rather vicious and public and entertaining to outsiders.

Watmore emerged from the fray as UK managing partner and later managing director of the consultancy arm of Accenture. He also had time to take in the dot-com boom. The new Accenture had joint ventures with Microsoft and BT, a venture capital fund and a cable television company.

But none of these got so far that the dot-com collapse hurt the newly divorced company. In 2002, Accenture UK hit the £1bn mark in the UK and numbered BP, Sainsbury's and London Stock Exchange as major technology clients.

The company was to go on to build up its government and big company business. It has scooped two NHS contracts – the National Insurance deal has quietly slipped away - and has held on to Sainsbury's.

It's not been an uneventful five years. It may not have been obvious to outsiders but Watmore has weathered a few storms and remained calm to the outside world.

The family home is in Manchester - but it's not yet clear if the new e-government chief will become a telecommuter.