ICT has welcomed a new Head of Technology Office, Richard Howells. Richard, who reports to Juan Villamil, ICT CIO.

Background: Richard‘s career has covered a range of technology roles in both the private and public sector, across industries including manufacturing, a tech start-up, finance and government.

Richard was Programme CTO at the Home Office - delivering on the department's digital strategy. Richard's other roles include; Delivery Director, leading on the digital transformation of a major operational command, Technical Director for a programme in the Governments Major Projects Portfolio.

Richard has worked in Cabinet Office, HSBC, Rolfe&Nolan and started his career as a design engineer at Racal Electronics.

Richard holds a MEng (hons) in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and an MBA. He is a Chartered Engineer and both a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Richard lives in Battersea with his wife and two daughters.  Outside of work he enjoys sailing and tries to keep fit with some running!

Objectives for the Technology Office

The Technology Office, with input from the ICT leadership team, is currently developing a technology strategy for the College. This includes establishing a governance process to enable product lines to be autonomous, responsible and accountable for their end to end deliveries; as well as creating a Governance board with distinct terms of reference that can create ways of working and guide rails.

The Technology Office team believes in transparency and inclusivity. They want to bring stakeholders from each Faculty and the Business School into that environment, so they can see the ICT strategy develop while also being able to input into it.

They aspire to having the Professional Services Transformation (PST) team in the stakeholder map as well as having representation from the research community.