PROFILE
INVENTION AND INNOVATION IN ENGINEERING
AND SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE ARE IN GOOD
SHAPE WITH EUROPE LEADING THE WAY IN
MANY IMPORTANT AREAS.
physical estate in Europe, none of them
are European organisations and I lament
the lack of balance in that. As has always
been the case, invention and innovation in
engineering and scientific excellence are in
good shape with Europe leading the way
in many important areas, but a lot of that
innovation is acquired or naturally migrates
to the hyperscale public cloud companies. need to be considered up-front and demand
new skills such as security architects. All too
often, organisations take existing threat
and vulnerability models and approaches to
mitigate them ‘as is’ to the cloud and this is
often ineffective.
Changes companies/CIOs should
be making to improve the current
technology threats across the region My personal driver for my career is to ‘make
a difference’. This is why I work at the Met
Office where the mission and purpose is so
important despite earnings potential not
being what it would be in the private sector.
Another way that I can make a difference is
to help develop and encourage talent and
I try to do that in a variety of ways. I am
a long-term and active STEM ambassador
where I spend time encouraging young
people to learn to enjoy and maintain STEM
subjects. I am an industrial adviser to schools
which is about helping to ensure that in
On the threat front, my view is that most
organisations need to put significantly
more focus and investment in cyber and
information security. Many ‘traditional’
organisations are moving to cloud-based
capabilities but in doing so are not
recognising the importance of changing the
security approach. Cloud offers new ways to
‘design in’ security and resilience that really
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Developing the skills of others and
putting this into practice
addition to meeting attainment targets and
league tables, young people are equipped
for the workplace and have a realistic
understanding of the kinds of skills that the
present and future employer requires. I am
the executive sponsor for apprenticeships
and industrial placements and I work hard
to ensure that there are a variety of ‘ways
in’ to the rewarding and purposeful STEM
roles that we have at the Met Office. Perhaps
surprisingly as a middle-aged white male, I
am also a strong advocate of the diversity
agenda. My career has taught me that
adopting a blinkered and constrained view
of getting the ‘best’ people to undertake
challenging work is fraught with danger.
Experience suggests that while of course
you need people with requisite base skills,
a diverse team looking at a challenging
problem will always out-perform a single
perspective group of ‘experts’, at least in
terms of value generation. This view of
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