Buckingham Palace is ensuring it keeps up with modern technology through a variety of measures, including appointing an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Director to look after the Queen's computer and telephony systems across the Royal Household.The post has a salary of £70,000 (US$130,000) to £80,000 (US$150,000) per year and the appointee will be responsible for managing more than 900 users around the UK, as well as implementing wider ICT initiatives.
Tabloid headlines such as the Daily Record's "Queen's in need of geek" relay the importance with which the Palace sees the role. A Buckingham Palace spokesman commented:
"An effective information and communications strategy underpins the work of the royal household, and developing and implementing change programmes to merge and enhance ICT will be at the heart of this role. This is an important new role and reflects the importance we put on good communications and keeping up to date with technology. We have had lower level specialists, now we feel there is a need for such a senior post within the Palace."
The job advert asked for "applicants from the public or private sector who have held a role at board level or equivalent, and have experience with sophisticated user support and development function using desktop networked systems, mobile and networked telephony and web-based communications." But, just in case you were thinking about applying, applications for the post closed on Monday.
For those with less experience the Palace is still recruiting for a Web Editor, at £30,000 per annum plus benefits, to work on the British Monarchy website - www.royal.gov.uk. Applicants should "be of graduate calibre, with previous experience working on a high-profile web site in the public or media sectors" and "also be a first-class writer, able to develop imaginative and creative copy, have strong project management skills and be able to work effectively within a team and to strict budgetary constraints. Expertise in Photoshop, Content Management Systems, HTML and statistical packages is prerequisite, in addition to an awareness of emerging digital technologies and the current online environment. Knowledge of WC3 and Government web standards would be an advantage." If you happen to read this in time, the closing date for this application is Friday 20th October.
Potential applicants may wish to peruse the British Monarchy website as it has a "People Profiles" section where you can read about people who work within the Palace; how they got their job, what advice they would offer and what their daily routine is, among a host of other things. Of particular interest to IT types may be Mohammed Saleh's profile of his role as IT User Support Team Leader.
The British Monarchy web site was originally launched in March 1997, with an updated version of the site launched in November 2001. The site currently copes with around two million page views every month from all over the world.
