Central government IT has not had a special interest group and the organization can benefit its local government core by engaging with central government IT leaders.

Financial services group KPMG recently completed a corporate services review of Socitm and outlined some objectives for the organization to achieve as it moves forwards. "The KPMG report is the first step and now we have some administrative and organization priorities. The leadership lost its way, so we have been looking at the structure, the communications agenda and membership services. We don't have an ethical code and I'm keen to establish one," he says. KPMG identified financing issues and then created a set of development ideas for the organization.

Steel is keen to get the ball rolling and at this month's National Council meeting he will put forward his ideas for the changes, which will then be presented to the Socitm AGM in April.

Among the changes already in motion are a smaller decision making-team to streamline processes, with seven people involved rather than 30.

The workload of the organization is also shifting, in recognition that the members as CIOs and IT leaders at various local government bodies are extremely busy.Therefore another change is that the elected leadership are make decisions, while the officers who work for . In another example of honesty Steel adds: "We also don't make good use of IT for areas such as the management of membership," something he also plans to change.

Steel takes over at Socitm at a time when faith in government ability to protect individual's data has been seriously harmed by the mistakes made at HMRC at the end of 2007.

Steel is of course straight to the point and admits that the public's faith in government IT has been damaged and that he fully understands why. But the debate has to move on Steel says. "It is not just about the IT department, but information governance, records management and ensuring the integrity of the systems. Information governance has been about box ticking, it now needs to become a priority, especially with departmental partnerships."