Meet our 12 awards judges

The entries are already coming in for this year's Computing Awards for Excellence - and we can now announce the prestigious line-up of judges who will decide the winners.

The awards are recognised as the Oscars of the IT industry. This year the prizes will be handed out at the awards ceremony at Battersea Park Events Arena in London on 16 November.

Our panel of experts will help to decide who will collect the awards for the following categories:

Project Awards

Private Sector Project of the Year

Public Sector Project of the Year

Voluntary Sector Project of the Year

Innovative Project of the Year

Student Project of the Year

Individual and team awards

IT Leader of the Year

IT Professional of the Year

IT Department of the Year

Business Manager of the Year

Industry awards

Business Hardware Supplier of the Year

Business Software Supplier of the Year

IT Services Supplier of the Year

Networking and Communications Supplier of the Year

UK IT Company of the Year

Company awards

Most IT-Enabled Organisation Award

Most IT-Enabled Small Business Award

IT in the Community Award

IT Employer of the Year

For further information on the event, and on how to submit your entry for the Computing Awards for Excellence, visit -

Ian Watmore

Ian is the head of the egovernment unit at the Cabinet Office, and chairs the government CIO Council. He was previously UK managing director of consultancy Accenture, where he worked from 1980 until moving to his current role last year. Ian also chairs the IT industry board of sector skills council e-Skills UK, and is a past president of the Management Consultants Association.

Jim Norton

Jim is the senior policy advisor - ebusiness and egovernment, for the Institute of Directors, an external member of the Board of the Office of Science & Technology, and member of the Parliamentary IT Committee. He holds a number of non-executive directorships, and is a member of the Strategic Stakeholders' Group of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.

Peter Scargill

Peter is the National IT Chairman of the Federation of Small Business (FSB), the UK's largest business organisation, representing more than 185,000 member companies and 1.25 million people. The FSB promotes and protects the interests of the self-employed and owners of small firms. Peter also runs his own small business designing software for web sites and bespoke applications.

Angela Waite

Angela is head of ICT at Canterbury City Council and is the president of local authority user group Socitm. She has worked in local government since 1988, with Rochester City Council through local government reorganisation to Medway Council, where she helped create and manage the ICT team, developing service level agreements using Socitm Key Performance Indicators.

Terry Hook

Terry is skills development executive responsible for the IT industry at sector skills council e-Skills UK. He is also a director of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) Foundation. Terry has more than 30 years' experience in IT with IBM Global Services, where he was technical education manager for the UK, Holland, Ireland and South Africa.

Dr Alf Roberts

Alf is the chief executive of the IEE, the largest professional society for engineering in Europe. He joined the IEE in 1999 from PowerGen, where as commercial director he was responsible for developing and implementing the company's strategy for the expansion of its business in the UK and internationally.

John Higgins

John has been director general of Intellect, the trade association for the UK hi-tech industry, since its launch in May 2002. He previously fulfilled the same role at the CSSA. John is an executive member of many industry task force teams, including the Intellect/OGC Senior IT Forum and the Intellect/NHS Supplier Consultation Group.

Denise Plumpton

Since January Denise has been director of information at the Highways Agency. She also chairs blue-chip IT user group The Corporate IT Forum (Tif). From 1989 to 1999 she was commercial manager and IT director at Powergen, followed by four years as IT director of TNT, and a year as IT director at UK mobile phone manufacturer Sendo.

Wendy Hall

Wendy is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. She was president of the BCS in 2003-04, and is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology. Wendy is a non-executive director of several companies and charitable trusts.

Margaret Smith

Margaret Smith was appointed chief executive of user group CIO Connect in January, having previously worked at a number of blue-chip companies. She joined Legal & General in 1988 and became their chief information officer in 1989. In 1994 she became managing director of an internal startup, L&G Direct, before re-assuming the role of CIO in 2000.

Jeremy Beale

Jeremy is responsible for ebusiness policy and member best-practice at the CBI. He is a member of the Broadband Stakeholder Group Executive, the Policy Advisory Board of Nominet, which is responsible for UK internet country-code allocations, and the Board of tScheme, the UK Digital Certificates Authority.

Ashley Braganza

Ashley is a senior lecturer in the Innovation and Process Management Community at Cranfield School of Management. He directs Nexus - The Knowledge Exchange, the IT Directors' Forum and Achieving Strategy through Business Process Change, and advises several organisations in the areas of process, change and knowledge management.