BIS hires former GDS deputy director Emma Stace as chief digital officer

The latest in a long line of CDO appointments in Whitehall as government continues its digital push

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has hired Government Digital Service (GDS) deputy director Emma Stace as its chief digital officer (CDO).

Stace began her new role today, tweeting that she was "very pleased to be joining [her] colleagues at BIS as their new CDO".

Stace is the latest of several Whitehall CDO appointments in the past few years, following the likes of Normal Driskell, who joined the Home Office from Credit Suisse, and Conall Bullock, who became CDO of the Cabinet Office earlier this year, as the government aims to transform the way it works and communicates with citizens by becoming "digital by default".

On her LinkedIn profile, Stace (left) explained that she was part of the leadership team that started the government's digital transformation programme, digitising 25 major government services.

She then worked on developing government-as-a-platform, a common core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes that aims to make it easy to build user-centric government services.

Her new role will be to lead the strategic programme of digital and ICT transformation at BIS.

Last week, the government's chief data officer and head of GDS, Mike Bracken, emphasised the importance of hiring the right people to lead digital transformation in government, naming Stace as an example of that.

He said that in total, Whitehall had appointed over 120 senior digital and technology professionals. It has also brought in 90 senior interims who have worked on digital transformation.

"Having senior staff in departments who really ‘get' digital means that the people on the front line know that they have the backing they need. Hire the head and the rest will follow," he said.

Bracken emphasised that part of working in an agile way was knowing that good ideas did not just percolate from the top down.

"They require clever, creative people at every level of the organisation. That's why, beyond the senior hires, GDS has also been involved in hiring and training 172 service managers who are already bringing their expertise to building services so good people prefer to use them," he said.

"And we're thinking about the future. We currently oversee 125 digital and technology fast streamers (we hired the most recent intake), and we designed the new three-year programme which sees them working on digital projects in departments across government," he added.