Government CIO Andy Nelson has been appointed as CIO at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Nelson was appointed government CIO in April 2012 to add to his role as CIO of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), which he started in September 2009.
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He takes over from former DWP CIO Philip Langsdale who sadly passed away days before Christmas.
Permanent secretary for Work and Pensions, Robert Devereux, welcomed Nelson's new appointment.
"I am delighted to welcome Andy Nelson to the department as we make our welfare reforms a reality, including the imminent start of Universal Credit, the Personal Independence Payment and the Benefit Cap," he said.
"Mr Nelson's wealth of experience prior to him joining the civil service, together with his recent role in the Ministry of Justice and as Government CIO place him in a unique position to help us as we enter a critical period in the transformation of the welfare system," he added.
On his appointment, Nelson said that he was "delighted to be taking on the role of DWP CIO and looked forward to working with the Secretary of State, Robert Devereux, and the team at DWP in delivering the transformation of the welfare system".
There has been no statement from the Cabinet Office as to what will happen with the government CIO position or whether Nelson will be replaced.
Computing had questioned the level of importance the government places on its CIO role, as Nelson's position took up only two days of his working week, while he devoted three days to the MoJ.
This sent out a message to the UK IT community that being CIO of the government, the country's biggest single user of technology, is a part-time role and that departmental focuses were of more importance - an idea that Nelson refuted.
"The MoJ strategy is based on datacentres, standardised desktops a single network, green IT - a lot of the same agenda items [as the government's ICT strategy], so there is a strong overlap with my roles," he said in an interview with Computing last year.
