The UKtech50: The top 20

After more than seven years as CIO at the Department for Work and Pensions and a year as government CIO, Joe Harley is retiring in 2012, leaving a gap to be filled as well as huge challenges. Harley played an important role in the delivery of a new IT strategy and strategic implementation plan.

The successor will not have a dual role like Harley. But the government CIO role alone is a big job on its own - arguably, one of the biggest in all of Whitehall. Who else will have the opportunity to fundamentally reform a key part of the Civil Service, and potentially save billions of pounds a year for the Exchequer?