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Fractional CTO · Embedded Fractional CTO
Embedded fractional CTO for a national ombudsman service
A national ombudsman service with a growing caseload, an ageing estate and a board that needed a technology leader in the room long before it could justify a full-time one.
The situation
A national ombudsman service handling complaints from the public about regulated sectors, with a caseload that had grown faster than the organisation around it. Technology had been run by a capable IT manager and a long-standing supplier, and both were out of their depth as the service moved from running an office to running a digital case-handling operation.
The board, drawn largely from legal and consumer-protection backgrounds, knew it needed senior technology leadership. It also knew it could not justify a full-time CTO on a public-interest budget, and it did not want a consultancy that would arrive with a methodology and leave with a report.
What was in the way
The constraints were real. Public accountability meant every pound had to be defensible. The data was sensitive by definition: people's complaints, finances and circumstances, under UK GDPR and the organisation's own duty of confidentiality. The case-management system was approaching end of support with no plan. The supplier relationship had drifted into dependency. And the IT manager, who knew where everything was, felt threatened by the idea of a CTO at all.
All eight pillars were in play: product, infrastructure, software, change, infosec, data, AI and people and leadership. None of them could be fixed in isolation.
What we did
Two days a month embedded, plus the calls in between. The first month was listening and drawing: the estate as it was, on one page, which nobody had seen before. The second month was the technology strategy, written for the board in the board's language, with three priorities and a budget it could defend to its sponsor.
The first priority was people and leadership. The IT manager became the head of technology operations with a clear remit and a seat at the table, and the fear went away once it was clear the CTO role was there to open doors for them, not replace them. The second was infosec and data: a data protection and security baseline the board could evidence, Cyber Essentials achieved, and a supplier contract renegotiated with service levels that meant something. The third was the case-management system: a product-led replacement plan, with the people who handle complaints designing the requirements, rather than the supplier.
Across the year the fractional CTO attended every board meeting, chaired the technology steering group, ran the supplier, and brought a monthly drawing of where things stood that the chair started using with the sponsor. AI arrived in the final quarter: a governed pilot of AI-assisted case summarisation, with GRACE applied before anything touched a live complaint, and a policy the board approved that the service could publish.
What changed
A three-year technology strategy approved by the board and its sponsor. The case-management replacement procured, with the service's own people writing the requirements and a supplier chosen on evidence. Supplier costs down by a fifth with service levels up. Cyber Essentials in place and a data protection baseline the ombudsman could show to the regulators it reports to. A head of technology operations who runs the function day to day.
What they kept
The strategy, the steering group and the monthly drawing, all continuing without the fractional CTO in the room. A permanent head of technology who was there all along. And a board that now asks technology questions it would once have avoided.
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