Jonathan Bates: Curriculum Vitae

Personal details

Name: Jonathan Bates

Home address: 21 Lancaster Gardens, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SS1 2NS

Telephone: (+44) (0)1702 640098

Mobile: (+44) (0)7786 862939

Home e-mail: [email protected]

Date and place of birth: 19 July 1950, at Hillingdon

Nationality: British

Marital status: Married

Dependants: son (born 22/07/1980)

Current position: HM Revenue and Customs

Office address: 3rd Floor, HM Revenue and Customs, 100 Parliament Street, London SW1A 2BQ

Work telephone: Not yet assigned

Qualifications

Post Graduate Diploma - IT and Management - Sheffield Hallam University, 1996

Post Graduate Certificate (Distinction) - IT and Management - Sheffield Hallam University, 1995

BA (Hons) - European Cultural History - Open University, 1987

2 'A' levels - Mathematics, Physics - 1968

7 'O' levels - English, Mathematics (x2), French, Physics, Chemistry, Music - 1966

Language skills

Native language - English

Fluent - French

Intermediate - German

Technical training received

Most recently I have completed a post-graduate course in IT and Management (also called Hybrid Management). This consisted of a mixture of Information Science and Management Science modules, in equal amounts.

In previous years, I have attended a number of courses, with a variety of internal and external training organisations, which again covered both technical and management topics. Subject areas covered include: -

• Programming
• Systems Analysis
• Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology (SSADM)
• Business Analysis and IS Strategy Development
• Economic Appraisal
• Information Mapping
• Project Management
• Projects in a Controlled Environment (PRINCE)
• Change Management
• People Management
• Electronic Communications

Career details

Jan 2004 to date

Lorry Road-User Charge Project (LRUC), Policy Manager, HM Customs and Excise.I was responsible for European legislation and policy matters. The work split into two halves � I spent 50% of my time on negotiations for a new European directive on road tolling for heavy lorries and other matters such as state aids, and 50% of my time on the development of European interoperability standards for road tolling.

The former required me to brief the UK Permanent Representative for EC working group negotiations, to contribute to Ministerial briefings co-ordinated between three Departments (HMT, DfT and HMRC) and to produce internal project briefing material (including for the Minister and the programme board). I also took part in bilateral and trilateral meetings with opposite numbers in the French and German administrations.

The interoperability work required me to assess the impact of the European Interoperability Directive on the programme and influence the development of the European technical standards for interoperability in a variety of European forums. This was often highly technical work which required strong analytical skills and a broad knowledge of the emerging technical solution.

Achievements:

• All important provisions needed for LRUC included in new Directive text
  
• New Directive given political agreement.
  
• LRUC�s interests protected in European negotiations.
  
• LRUC�s requirement for vehicle classification included in European standard.
  
• LRUC�s interest protected in negotiations about developing other European standards for road tolling.
  
• Raised the profile of interoperability within the programme through presentations and workshops.
  
• Commissioned and steered the development of an Interoperability Strategy for LRUC.
  
• Reviewed and produced the formal LRUC comments on a variety of key external products and proposed standards, including OMISS, ISO17575, VERA.

July 2002 to Dec 2003

Head of IS Finance, Business Planning and Electronic Communications Team, HM Customs and Excise IS Division. The Branch consisted of three teams. As head of the finance team (20 people), I was responsible for managing a budget of ~�105 millions. Leading the Electronic Communications Team (6 people) I developed, publicised and monitored the Department�s policy on use and abuse of electronic communications. Leading the Business Planning Team (3 people) I measured the IS division�s progress against their business plan and reported this to the senior management team, with proposals for corrective action as required.

Achievements:

• Put in place new financial governance procedures (there were none documented before).
  
• Developed and implemented a financial assurance programme.
  
• Led the Finance Team to adopt new orders-oriented procedures, which made fuller use of Oracle Financials and served as a pilot for the Department in developing Oracle as an enterprise information management system.
  
• Developed, maintained and widely publicised a Departmental �acceptable use� policy for desktop IT.
  
• Developed, maintained and widely publicised Departmental guidance on acceptable use of desktop IT for managers.
  
• Controlled the cost of mobile and fixed telephony use.
  
• Implemented policy on the Department�s PC �desktop�.

Sept 2001 to June 2002

Various assignments on a �consultancy� basis for the IS Division of HM Customs and Excise.

Achievements:

• Devised a modelling method, Business Interaction Modelling, to define rules of engagement between the parts of an organisation, and employed this technique to help define the new emerging organisation.
  
• Developed a Contingency Plan which was accepted to address the risk of failure of the outsourced IS provider. This proposed a way to replace entirely the provision of IS services to HMCE, in the event of an emergency or failure of the contract.

Sept 1998 to Sept 2001

Detached National Expert for Raw Data Collection, Eurostat. Eurostat is the Statistical Office of the European Communities, one of the General Directorates of the European Commission, and an organisation of over 700 people. Its function is to produce statistics at the European level, mostly from data provided by the individual member states' administrations, and in addition to its own administrators it also employs experts from the member states' administrations on 2 to 3 year contracts. I am one of these.

My role was to promote the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and informatics to improve the collection of raw statistical data in the European Union (EU). The objective of this work was to reduce the burdens on the respondents, to reduce the cost of collection for the administrations and to improve the quality of the data.

The work involved working in a multi-national environment and seeking progress through teamwork and consensus. The key issues that I was trying to advance were the sharing and exchange of knowledge and know-how between member states, the use of new technologies, especially the internet, and the automation of the data extraction from enterprises information systems.

My principal activities and responsibilities were to:

• Develop a 'policy and plan' strategy for raw data collection for Eurostat.
  
• Set up and run the Collection of Raw Data (CoRD) Task Force with a membership drawn from member states' administrations to co-ordinate raw data collection activity across the EU.
  
• Investigate, initiate and follow-up projects in raw data collection.
  
• Produce and publish a survey of current European developments of web forms for the collection of raw statistical data.
  
• Contribute to the management of the EDICOM (EDI for Commerce) Task Force.
  
• Steer the development of the XML/INSTAT, the XML version of the standard message for Intrastat.
  
• Develop a 'vision' strategy for IT in support of the European Statistical System ('A Vision of IT in Support of the ISS').
  
• Make a major contribution to a project to measure the quality of Eurostat's non-statistical products.

May 96 to Sept 98

Head of Information Systems for the Tariff and Statistical Office (TSO) of HM Customs and Excise. The Tariff and Statistical Office is an organisation of over 500 people which is responsible for producing the UK trade statistics and maintaining the UK Tariff. I led a team of 30 people and had responsibility for arranging for all IS services to be delivered to the Tariff and Statistical Office, both mainframe and local information technology (LIT).

Key activities were to:

• Manage the maintenance and development of the mainframe trade statistics systems. These were mainly COBOL applications running on ICL machines under VME.
  
• Manage the development and implementation of projects.
  
• Manage the delivery of LIT services to Tariff and Statistical Office.
  
• Develop and manage the operation of financial systems for IS in Tariff and Statistical Office.
  
• Manage the programme of UK's contribution to the European EDICOM programme.
  
• Develop of an IS strategy for Tariff and Statistical Office, and manage the implementation of it.
  
• Advise the Head of Tariff and Statistical Office on IS matters.
  
• Represent the interests of the Tariff and Statistical Office on a variety of IS committees.

Jan 93 - May 96

Deputy Head of the Information Systems Strategy Unit for HM Customs and Excise. The unit operated on 'team-working' lines, and was responsible for the implementation of the Departmental Information Systems Strategy. This involved the establishment of a management framework and the development of a series of policies to direct the use of IS in HM Customs and Excise. We also reviewed the process for the approval of information systems strategies (ISS) and developed a department-wide standard for IS strategies.

In addition I assisted a number of business areas in the development of their IS strategies, reviewed a number of IS strategies and made recommendations about their adoption departmentally.

I developed an Information Management policy for HM Customs and Excise, and devised a method for the prioritisation of IS projects and the allocation of funds. I also managed the IS Budget Centre team.

July 91 - Dec 92

IT Manager with HM Customs and Excise IT Division. Managing a branch of mixed IT specialists and business analysts. Responsibilities included managing the development of business and information systems strategies for various parts of HM Customs and Excise, the maintenance of the IT Division's IT Strategy, and the development of an operational planning system for the IT Division. I also led the branch to successful implementation of a Quality Management System to ISO 9001 standards (certification approved by Lloyds) and acted as Project Executive on three major IT projects run under the PRINCE methodology (Projects IN a Controlled Environment).

April 90 - June 91

IT Manager with HM Customs and Excise IT Division. Promoted to lead a small team with the principal objective of developing and implementing the policy necessary to create a Project Manager Cadre within the IT specialism in HM Customs and Excise. This involved defining skills profiles, training profiles, selection criteria, job descriptions, terms and conditions. It also involved negotiations with the Departmental personnel division and with the trade unions, obtaining accommodation and budget, and procuring equipment.

I also managed a separate project to develop an activity costing system for the IT Division. This required me to establish policy, perform the analysis and design, and implement the system.

Sept 89 - Mar 90

IT Team Leader with HM Customs and Excise IT Division. Team Leader of the Senior Management Technical Support Unit. Work involved special projects of research, analysis and drafting concerning technical and management issues in support of the senior management team of the IT division of HM Customs and Excise. Notably this included a study on the reward and retention of specialist IT staff.

1985 - 1989

IT Team Leader with HM Customs and Excise IT Division. Promoted to Team Leader on a project developing a new computer system for Customs' handling of import and export freight. This project was developed using the Structured System Analysis and Design Method (SSADM), and during this time I was trained by Learmonth and Burchett Management Systems (LBMS) in their Logical System Design Method (LSDM). The job involved development of a programming strategy, leading a team developing a logical data structure (LDS), the development of project standards (notably for Structured English, data flow diagrams (DFD) and the LDS). It also included leading a small team providing technical support to the project and general administrative support.

1982 - 1985

IT Specialist with HM Customs and Excise IT Division. Joined the Computer Services Division of HM Customs and Excise on promotion and worked with a small team on systems analysis and programming of a part of the VAT computer system. This involved developing an on-line transaction processing system giving access to the central VAT database to Customs officers at local offices throughout the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.

1974 - 1982

Various different jobs in HM Customs and Excise working both in Headquarters in London, and in a local office in Nottingham. The content of the work ranged from development and implementation of policy, through preparation of cases for prosecution to local tax control visiting.

1971 - 1974

Various temporary jobs in Nottingham in local administration and the regional electricity board, performing clerical and administrative duties.

1968 - 1971

Full time student at Nottingham University. BSc course in Electrical Engineering not completed.

Relevant activities outside work

Before my last posting to Luxembourg I was an active School Governor for 12 years. I was a member of the Board of Governors of a local comprehensive school which had about 1200 pupils and an annual budget of about �3 million. The Board of Governors managed the budget. I chaired the Premises Committee, the Pupil Discipline Committee and the Staff Discipline Committee. In the latter role, I was involved in a successful (for the school) industrial tribunal hearing as a principal witness.