The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has added two former senior technology sector leaders to its board.
The organisation announced that Sachin Jogia and Indro Mukerjee have both been recruited as non-executive directors.
Jogia arrives at Defra with “a technology and product leadership background across global organisations”. His most recent posting was as group director of technology strategy and transformation at Sky, and previous roles include the chief technology post at regulator Ofcom, as well as nine years spent in senior posts at Amazon – in both the UK and US.
Mukerjee, meanwhile, was chief executive of government agency Innovate UK from 2021 until six months ago.
“He is a highly experienced business leader, with CEO experience across technology and industrial businesses from multinationals to startups and private equity-backed ventures,” the announcement from Defra added. “With a global career spanning Asia, the US, and Europe, Indro has led innovation, fast growth, spinouts, M&A, and business transformation across many different business situations. He has been strongly committed to supporting skills development, including co-founding and chairing the UK Electronics Skills Foundation.”
Each of the two new recruits will serve a three-year term on the Defra board.
“Non-executive board members are senior figures from outside government, appointed to provide challenge to government departments,” Defra said. “All non-executive board member appointments are made in line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.”
The Blueprint for a digital government policy paper published earlier this year outlined that, by the end of this year, all public sector organisations are expected to ensure they “have a digital leader on their executive committee and a digital non-executive director on their board”.