MoD CDIO Mike Stone to leave at the end of March 2017

Stone's departure follows rumours of rifts at the top

Mike Stone has become the latest high-profile departure at the top of the Civil Service after quitting his role as chief digital and information officer at the Ministry of Defence.

It comes after a series of departures at the Government Digital Service as departments and the Cabinet Office tussle for control of IT across the Civil Service.

According to the MoD, Stone resigned, providing the six months notice required according to his contract. It is expected that Stone will work out his contract.

Stone has only been CDIO at the MoD for just over two years, with the aim of transforming the IT not just of the 40,000 or so civil servants that work at the department, but also the armed forces that they serve.

Just last month, Stone was outlining his transformation plans at Splunk's .conf2016 annual user conference. These included rolling out applications in the cloud via a private instance of Microsoft Azure, including an Office 365 rollout.

The MoD, he said, is poised to roll out a series of new platforms and tools that are intended to make better use of information. Analytics software would form part of this.

"The power of the cloud and mobility, social media, and, especially, platforms - particularly platform economics - is what I'm seeking to exploit. What I want to do is to ensure that we're providing to servicemen and civil servants the kinds of capabilities that are 'of the moment', if not better than what they can get at home," said Stone.

Stone himself spent 28 years in the British Army, rising to the rank of brigadier and serving as the Army's CIO and, before that, as the IT director for the Field HQ in the Army. His Army experience included tours of Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus and Kenya.

After serving in the Army, Stone worked at Indian outsourcing company Mastek as chief client officer before becoming CEO of the Defence Business Services of hospitality company DBS.