Met Police appoints Angus McCallum as CIO

After nearly a year of searching for a CIO, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has appointed Angus McCallum to the position.

McCallum will head up MPS’s Digital Policing arm and drive its transformation plans. This includes appointing a Digital Policing senior leadership team and “delivering savings which the Met needs to make through its current transformation plans”, the force said.

Commenting on the appointment, deputy commissioner Craig Mackey said that, over the next three to four years, “we envisage an unprecedented transformation of our technology”.

“Under Angus’s stewardship, we will deliver the transformation to equip our officers with cutting edge mobile technology, enabling them provide a faster and more effective response to crime across London,” he said.

"We will implement a series of new fast and flexible online services that will also allow Londoners to interact with us in different ways. Angus brings solid experience to help shape these changes and will, I am sure, make an outstanding contribution in delivering the step change in the MPS ICT capability.”

The MPS first advertised for a CIO in February 2015 after previous CIO Richard Thwaite’s interim contract came to an end, leaving the position to current interim John Lowry.

The original job advert stated the role would involve shaping the future strategies and operational policing for the Met Police, and offered a salary of between £152,915 and £197,133, plus £3,501 location allowance.

However Computer Weekly understands the MPS struggled to fill the position and recruitment was temporarily put on hold while Lowry continued as an effectively part-time, interim CIO with his deputy, Chris Naylor, as interim director of digital policing.

McCallum, who has spent five years as global CIO at BG Group. has a tough task ahead of him. The Met Police needs to save £800m from its annual budget – which is £3.2bn for 2015/16 – by 2020. Some £262m is to be cut by 2016/17.

In March 2015, it also came to light that the Met Police plans to cut 700 IT jobs under a scheme to outsource software development and IT services.