Job Title : CIO

Organization : HM Revenue & Customs

As CIO of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) Phil Pavitt has control of an IT budget worth £840m each year, the third largest in government.

Pavitt has an immense IT estate under his control, with HMRC relying on 650 major tax and benefit systems and 2,500 databases hosted on 6,300 servers in nine datacentres. On the PC side, HMRC has 90,000 desktops and 9,000 laptops.

Pavitt was previously CIO at Transport for London (TfL), where he reduced TfL’s software estate to just seven core applications and streamlined its vendor agreements, in order to achieve a £400m saving.

He began his career in 1996 as director of commercial support at CabelTel International. In 1998 he headed up NTL’s internet TV launch, becoming CIO for the company in 2003 and in 2005 he moved to Onetel, part of the Centrica group, also as CIO.

Pavitt is a familiar face on the CIO50, having featured on the list in 2009 and 2008.

Outside of his work commitments, Pavitt is a trustee of Bar ‘N’ Bus, an outreach charity working with young people in South East Essex.