Andrew Pinder

Andrew Pinder, CBE, lead the Office of the e-Envoy from 2000 to 2004, reporting directly to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

He held the post of Chairman of Becta (a government agency, funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families which oversees the e-strategy for Education and supports information and communications technology (ICT) and e-learning in schools and colleges) from January 2006 to January 2009.

He has held many executive posts in the public and private sector relating to IT.

Early life

Pinder was born in 1947. He was educated at the University of Liverpool from 1969-1972 where he received a BA in Economics and Geography.

e-Envoy

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.^[1]

In this role, he gave a speech at the CBI in November 2001.^[2]

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."^[3]

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".^[4] This hope was reiterated by the a minister for the Cabinet Office as late as January 2003.^[5]

Pinder appeared before the Public Accounts Committee on 13 May 2002,^[6] 12 June 2002 ^[6] and 3 May 2002 where Edward Leigh MP was "surprised by the woolly answers"^[7]

On concluding the job, he pronounced his work a success.^[8]

Other positions

• United Utilities, as non-executive director since September 2001^[9][10]
• Entrust, as senior vice president since October 2006 and member of the board of directors since November 2004.^[11]
• Spring Group, as non-executive director, in March 2005^[10][12]
• Intel Global Advisory Board, as member since January 2006.^[10]
• Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited (DMSL), also known as at800, as Chairman since January 2013. DMSL, a UK based Company, has responsibility for mitigating potential interference issues arising from the coexistence of digital terrestrial television (DTT) and 4G mobile services in the 800 MHz band. Its board includes all UK MNOs, broadcasters (including the BBC), and Ofcom.

Other previously held positions

• Becta Chair of the Board of Trustees from January 2006 to January 2009.
• Citibank Head of European Operations and Technology, then Head of Global Operations for Citibank’s Global Transactional Services business, between 1995 to 1999.^[12]
• Prudential Assurance, Director of Systems and Business Operations from 1990 to 1994.^[12]
• A partner in a venture capital firm and carried out a number of management consultancy assignments for the British government.^[10]
• Director of information technology at the Office of Inland Revenue. Employed there for 18 years until 1990.^[13]
• President at Gov3 Consulting, an ICT (& Public Policy) consulting company staffed by former members of the Office of the e-Envoy. He has since left the company and Gov3 was amalgamated and taken over by another firm in late 2009.^[14]

References