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Today's announcement that the UK Government has appointed a new CIO from within the ranks of its existing CIOs - appointee Andy Nelson will retain his title as Ministry of Justice CIO - is good for continuity but does appear on the surface to lack ambition and is far from radical. 
Mr Nelson was appointed by Ian Watmore, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office - both passed through Accenture and Mr Nelson also worked at Royal Sun Alliance, Asda, now owned by Walmart and his current berth at the MOJ.
I hope I am wrong but it is hard to see how much impact Mr Nelson can have. The Government's programme has been laid out and documented. Speaking with a contact at a large provider of IT services to government I was told the procurement people have had all the power for the last two years and they have not been exercising it apart from in the negative. Budgets won't be going up but public sector data center consolidation will continue and that means new ways of doing things.

Coincidentally today, I have read the Accenture Technology Vision 2012 report.
The first half deals with context based services and social-driven IT and perhaps that's were all the radical action is in pushing IT to deliver better services, cheaper. 
As I said The government has its agenda and has much infastructure work to be done.
Someone once told me that politicians only like computers because they think it makes them look modern. When I asked journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil - he presents the Daily Politics Show on the BBC - if that were the case he agreed totally saying only a couple of the younger intake of UK MPs had any idea about the power of the web, social media and the data revolution.

Mr Nelson is a civil servant and not a politician.

It might be too much to expect that he will be a radical CIO but let's hope we at least notice him and that he makes a significant impact on how the Government manages its IT. With so much technological disruption it would be a missed opportunity if he doesn't.