Mike Bracken CBE is a global digital leader who has led wholesale transformations of large institutions in the private and public sector. He helps organisations use digital to change their way of working and solve systemic market, societal and macroeconomic challenges. Mike is best known for leading the global revolution in digital government.
In 2011, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude brought Mike into government from the private sector as the UK’s first Executive Director of Digital and Chief Data Officer. Over five years, he created, led and scaled the Government Digital Service (GDS), reversing a decades-long culture of IT failure in government.
GDS shifted public services online on the single GOV.UK website, set new standards for open working and service design, and saved £4.1 billion for taxpayers. Mike introduced cross-government spend controls and a Technology Code of Practice, reformed technology governance and procurement, and created the first cross-government platforms, GOV.UK Pay and Notify.
Within four years, the UK was ranked top in the UN’s global rankings of digital government. Today, GOV.UK handles more than a billion transactions a year. To date, Mike has advised 38 countries on digital government reform, including the USA, Canada, Australia and Argentina.
In the private sector, Mike led Guardian News and Media’s transformation into a digital institution, delivering core digital platforms and new digital products, and opening content and data to third parties. As the Cooperative Group’s Chief Digital Officer, he launched a digital membership scheme increasing membership by 60%, and delivered multi-million pound efficiencies in its retail, legal services and funeral care businesses. In 2016, he co-founded Public Digital, a consultancy which supports multinational businesses, governments and NGOs with digital transformation.
He is an advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank on digital transformation in Latin America, and an honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London. He is a Non-Executive Director at Chetwood Bank, a fully licensed UK fintech. His previous non-executive portfolio has included Lloyds of London and the Omidyar Network philanthropic investment firm.
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