Leader: A tale of two IT chiefs - Tesco vs the NHS

Just how much is an IT director worth these days? If you're multinational supermarket giant Tesco then it's around £2.2m per year. If you're looking for someone to run a £7bn national IT programme in the NHS it's around £280,000.

Tesco's global IT and operations director Philip Clarke picked up the £2.2m performance-related package last year for his role helping the supermarket chain post record profits of £2.25bn.

NHS IT director general Richard Granger picked up his £280,000 for overseeing an ambitious £7bn - £6.2bn if you take out the digital picture archiving project - national programme to modernise the UK's health service.

Both of those IT directors probably have a significant impact on the daily lives of millions of UK citizens, albeit in very different ways.

But which is more important - enough toilet roll being in stock and on the shelf for your weekly shop (and satisfying your shareholders) or a hospital doctor being able to access your electronic medical record at the touch of a button in an emergency?

Of course there are issues with the delivery of the NHS IT programme. The care record project is running some two-and-a-half years late and the local trusts are expected to fork out around £14bn from their own cash-strapped budgets to upgrade their IT infrastructure.

Yet it highlights the huge gulf in pay between the top-earning private sector CIOs and those in the public sector. And is the job at Tesco really 10 times harder than the NHS IT job?

There are other benefits to working in the civil service. Many cite a sense of 'public duty' or - as Granger calls it "moral motivation" - while the pension scheme and generous holiday allowance can make it an attractive package.

But the question remains whether the public sector can really attract the talent needed to run the ambitious national multi-billion pound IT programmes that this country's politicians seem so besotted with. The lesson, as seen with Tesco's record profits, is that you get what you pay for.