Credit: heinzremyschindler/Pixabay

HM Revenue and Customs is offering an annual salary of £120,000 for senior leader to spearhead the delivery of technology services underpinning the department’s adoption of shared services.

Led by the Cabinet Office, government is in the middle of a major shared-services drive, in which five clusters – each containing multiple departments and agencies – will implement and share standardised back-office software and tech infrastructure. HMRC is the lead department for the Unity cluster, which also includes the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the Department for Transport.

Government strategy documents indicate that the DfT and its arm’s-length bodies are the only Whitehall agencies that currently use back-office software from German-headquartered firm Arvato, while HMRC and DLUHC are the only two departments to use SAP.

The job advert for the HMRC-based role as director of tech services for the Unity cluster says that “this role is suitable for a proven senior leader with significant experience in leading large-scale, complex finance [and] HR technology transformation or business operational service delivery, underpinned by SAP products, ideally SAP Hana”.

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In addition to supporting the shared-services rollout, the successful candidate will also play a key role in supporting HMRC’s chief digital and information officer in delivering other internal departmental tech initiatives.

“This is a significant role that will be accountable for the delivery of technical services for this major programme, whilst also contributing to the overall direction of our digital transformation,” the advert said.

HMRC wishes to hear from applicants with a “clear track record of delivering outstanding service, [who is] able to attract and integrate new people [and] teams, and with a proven ability to develop senior relationships with internal and external technology service providers to deliver cost-effective end-to-end business services”.

Applications are open until 11.55pm on 30 May. The appointee will be based at one of a range of departmental offices: Birmingham; Bristol; Cardiff; Croydon; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Leeds; Liverpool; Manchester; Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Nottingham; Portsmouth; Stratford; Telford; and Worthing.

Major departments spend more than £500m a year on the provision of back-office services, according to the Public Accounts Committee. The Cabinet Office has claimed that the shared-services scheme will ultimately deliver savings of £1.8bn over the next 15 years.

But, in a recently published report, PAC said that the implementation of the programme to date has been impeded by the lack of a business case provided by the central department – which has led to a shortfall in funding provided so far to clusters.

In the 2021 spending review, Unity was one of three clusters – alongside the Matrix group of policy-focused departments and the Synergy collection of delivery-centric bodies – to bid for a cumulative awards of £759m. 

All three bids were rejected, but HM Treasury subsequently provided the clusters with collective backing of £300m – which a report from the National Audit Office has claimed is more than £100m less than is needed to support near-term delivery plans.