Joanna has headed the HMRC programme and
project management profession since January 2018 and
became interim Director General for our Covid-19
response last August, leading the implementation of the
Chancellor’s packages to support businesses and jobs
such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
During this time Joanna passed a recruitment panel for
substantive promotion to another Director General role
and has been confirmed by the Prime Minister and
Cabinet Secretary directly into this new role.
The new transformation group will have 3 core
functions:
- directly delivering our major cross-cutting
programmes, while ensuring collaboration across
HMRC’s
other business groups
- exercising oversight and coordination of the
portfolio, both the major changes and the range of
projects that will continue to be delivered from other
business groups
- leading HMRC’s project delivery
function, setting standards and ensuring project
professionals are trained, developed and perform to
those standards
HMRC’s
Executive Committee (ExCom) will work with senior
change leads across the department to agree which
programmes require the dedicated oversight of this new
group. While the group gets established, its remit will
focus on establishing the standards all projects will
work to, continuing to oversee the COVID-related
projects and taking leadership of the flagship Making
Tax Digital programme.
Key to the successful implementation of our long term
HMRC
strategy will be our ability to lay out, in a clear
multi-year roadmap, the combination of policy, process,
people and IT changes we need to make.
As we develop planning processes to support this, we
will need to work together to ensure the roadmap is
complete, coordinated and delivered. The new
Transformation Group will support and enable the direct
delivery of major cross-cutting programmes together
with oversight and coordination of a portfolio of wider
change projects which, together, move us forward.
Joanna will report to Angela MacDonald, HMRC Deputy Chief
Executive and Second Permanent Secretary, who said:
I’m delighted to announce Jo’s appointment, which is
critical for delivering the support our customers
need in these exceptionally busy and challenging
times and will be key in helping us to build trust in
our administration of tax and customs.
Jo has done an incredible job leading the delivery of
the COVID-19 support schemes over the past few months
and has substantial previous experience in leading
transformation programmes across government.
Joanna, who will base herself in Portsmouth, commented:
Over the last few months, HMRC has rightly won
plaudits for the work we have done to support
customers and the UK economy in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve been proud to lead our
response and thrilled to see the can-do attitude of
our people that has helped us achieve so much in such
a short period of time.
I want to carry this energy forward into the
longer-term transformation of our department to meet
the challenges ahead as we recover and reshape our
economy in the post-Brexit world and create a
world-leading digital tax and customs authority.
