The Government's chief information officer (CIO) at the Cabinet Office, John Suffolk, will be leaving his post before the end of the year, it was confirmed today.
However, both he and the Government have offered little reasoning as to why.
Suffolk took up the post in 2006 after the departure of Ian Watmore, the Government's first CIO and current chief operating officer of the Efficiency and Reform Group.
He was also revealed to be the second highest paid civil servant earning between 205,000 and 209,999 a year back in June when Prime Minister David Cameron published a list of civil service wages above 150,000 a year in an attempt to be more transparent.
Over the past five years he has worked on a number of technology projects, most recently alongside Francis Maude in planning for the G-Cloud and gauging the extent of cuts to IT projects.
"It has been a great honour to have been a civil servant and a huge privilege to have led the IT profession over the last five years," he said in a statement released today. "Without doubt we have transformed the UK into a leading user of technology benefiting Citizens and the UK economy."
He claimed to have been "immensely proud" of the work he has done with the new coalition Government and said he "greatly enjoyed" working with Maude, but when IT PRO asked the Cabinet Office his exact reasons for leaving, they were less than forthcoming.
Instead we received a statement from the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, who praised the work Suffolk had done and gave him the "best wishes of everyone in the Civil Service for driving the transformation of technology in Government."
