Bosses backtrack in council IT row (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Bosses backtrack in council IT row

9:00am Saturday 23rd September 2006 in News

COUNCIL bosses striving to find a boss for its rudderless IT department have been forced to rethink their strategy and belatedly take the advice of critics.

St Albans District Council has been searching for a permanent head of its computer department for some 18 months and has decided at last to upgrade the post to "head of service" - nearly a year after the overview and scrutiny committee recommended just that.

Independent councillor John Newman, who chaired the committee at the time, said: "We gave our guidance and they chose to ignore it.

"This is a piece of intense stupidity.

"The consultant said they should take somebody of management level. It should be somebody of real calibre. Months and months later, they come round to the same view."

In the absence of a permanent chief the council has been paying an outside consultant to advise on IT issues.

The post was advertised at a more junior level earlier this year and after interviews offered it on a fixed term basis to an experienced candidate who turned it down as he wanted a permanent position.

Councillor David Yates, responsible for IT on the Lib Dem cabinet, said that the post had been originally advertised on a lower level basis to save cash but the right candidates had not come forward.

He said: "We had a limited choice of candidates. In the long term, we wanted someone capable of operating at head of service level."

Councillor Yates said he was unable to comment on why the job had already been offered on a fixed-term basis.

He confirmed the consultancy costs over the last 18 months had been higher than the salary of the new post, but could not give details. He added that it had been important to wait until the authority's new chief executive Dan Goodwin was in his post before re-advertising the position.

A shortlist of six candidates for the post will be interviewed next week.