Wanted, a Twitter Tsar paid as much as PM to boost Government's 'online presence'

By Daniel Martin
Last updated at 8:17 AM on 8th April 2011


David Cameron is to appoint a highly paid ‘Twitter Tsar’ to boost the Government’s online presence.

The successful candidate will earn £142,000 a year – only £500 less than the Prime Minister himself.

The vacancy for the ‘new and exciting role of Executive Director of Digital’ was posted on the civil service website.

It will fuel criticism that Mr Cameron, who used to work in PR before becoming a politician, is more interested in public relations than he is in governing the country.

The listing comes as millions of public sector workers are taking a pay freeze – and as ministers are demanding that council chief executives earning more than the PM take a pay cut.

It is not the first time the Government has appointed a so-called Twitter expert. Gordon Brown brought in Andrew Stott as Director for Digital Engagement and Transparency in 2009 – on an even higher salary of £160,000.

The job specification for the Coalition position is full of digital gobbledegook.

It states: ‘The successful candidate will have a proven credibility in transformation through the delivery of digital channels and engagement together with a track record of leading digitally enabled change at a strategic level, in a large federated organisation with complex delivery chains.’

The job will ‘champion the citizen and end user through the implementation of the Coalition Government’s digital strategy’, it adds.And, perhaps surprisingly for a job involving explaining the Government’s digital strategy, on required language skills the advert states: ‘None.’

Cabinet office sources said the job would not just be about Twitter, the microblogging social media site in which users write messages of fewer than 140 characters.

The successful applicant will also run Directgov, a government website which gives people advice about tax and benefits.

The job is the idea of Martha Lane-Fox, the entrepreneur behind the lastminute.com website, who was appointed the Government’s Digital Champion with a remit to encourage more use of online resources.

Yesterday she said – appropriately on Twitter – that it was ‘mean’ to describe the role as ‘Twitter Tsar’, adding that it was about much more than that. She said it was essential for a government to have a decent website and she claimed the new job would involve cutting the number of government websites – saving millions of pounds.

Last night the Cabinet Office said: ‘The Executive Director of Digital is a major cross-government role that will have responsibility for overseeing and improving all of the Government’s online presence and extending the number of public services available online.

‘The new role combines the work of the Chief Executive of Directgov and part of the work of the Director for Digital Engagement and Transparency, and will bring considerable savings to the taxpayer.

‘The Executive Director will be responsible for more than 100 staff and for saving at least £6million from Directgov’s annual budget.’