Next stop HMRC: How TfL CIO will shake up the taxman

Interview: Phil Pavitt, CIO Transport for London, on making IT boring

From TfL to HMRC, CIO Phil Pavitt talks to silicon.com about the nerves surrounding his new role, cleaning up outsourcing deals, and why he wants to make IT boring

In a matter of months, there will be a new man in charge of taming the tangle of fragmented systems that power the British taxman.

From September, current Transport for London (TfL) CIO Phil Pavitt - who featured on this year's silicon.com CIO50 - will take over HM Revenue and Customs' (HMRC) £1bn IT department from acting CIO Deepak Singh.

Pavitt's challenge will be to realise vision of the Poynter Review and implement a single customer record across the HMRC's 650 computer systems.

Unsurprisingly, Pavitt admits to a degree of nervousness at the size of the challenge ahead of him.

"I do not feel that my approach [to being a CIO] will change for HMRC," he told silicon.com.

"There are aspects that really excite me, like the sheer size and the opportunity to really make something happen that you know is going to affect millions of customers.

"And part of me is a bit nervous and scared, again because of the sheer size and doing things that affect millions of customers."

Since arriving at TfL two-and-a-half years ago, Pavitt has been no stranger to taking on big projects.

Prior to his arrival TfL spent 60 per cent of its IT budget on 17 outsourcing contracts covering the bulk of its IT infrastructure and services, from desktop management to helpdesk.

Now, 15 of the 17 contracts have been brought back in-house, cutting headcount costs by £20m and desktop and support costs by 61 per cent, according to Pavitt.

"Why should outsourcing companies be cashing your cheque when I have brought them back in-house and are offering an exceptional service?" he said.

"Many traditional outsourcing deals that I have seen are yet to achieve the desired business transformation after 10 years."

Not all of these deals will remain in-house however: some services will be farmed back out after being "cleaned-up" in-house.

Pavitt has also headed up what he calls "the world's largest" deployment of thin clients, having already distributed 11,000 to staff. By August of this year, he hopes to have rolled them out to 75 per cent of TfL's 18,000 desktop and 4,000 laptop users.

"Instead of having a multiplicity of desktops and laptops you will have one or two devices for most staff," he said.

"The illustration that I like is the iPhone...

Click here to read page two of this article

...You have a common infrastructure, which is the iPhone, and 50,000 applications that are running on it."

Pavitt said thin client technology gives an excellent oversight of the IT infrastructure, describing how it has pinpointed that money was being wasted on licensing for 382 staff for an application that was being used by just 21 people.

TfL has already reduced the number of applications that it uses down from 11,000 to 500 and this year the number of datacentres it uses will drop from more than 40 to just two.

Pavitt has also pursued a shared services agenda, placing 65 per cent of TfL's systems on a shared common technology platform.

"Our HR department wanted an internal workflow system and the department managing the licensing of taxis wanted the same thing. Now the two business relationship managers are jointly purchasing SAP systems together.

"I almost cried - that was my magic moment as a CIO," he said.

Pavitt said that new joined-up back end systems will in future allow more real-time information on TfL services to be sent to customers' mobiles.

"We want the customer to be able to look at their mobile and see where the latest tube train is to the second and be able to look at a GSM map," he said.

Pavitt added that if a pilot of a system allowing travellers in the London Borough of Newham to access real-time travel information as well as access local council service information from their mobile proves popular, similar schemes will be launched across the rest of London.

Any potential rollouts are likely to go ahead without Pavitt at the helm, however, with his move to HMRC not far off now.

"I think I have been partially successful," he said of his stint at TfL. "My job was to make IT work and deliver the basics right and build a future platform that could be built on a generic basis.

"There is still some way to go but I am going to hand over to a team that can see the way through."

"I see my job as being to make IT boring. What I mean by that is that IT just does its job without people even thinking about it."