Andrew Besford is a digital leader with over 25 years’ experience helping organisations improve how they use technology and data to modernise services and deliver sustained change, while staying secure.
He works across large private sector organisations and complex public systems, with deep experience in technology-enabled business transformation. Through non-executive roles, he also brings insight into how digital capability can support health and care systems.
Andrew is an independent consultant. Before this he spent five years as a senior civil servant. His first public sector post was at the Department for Work and Pensions, where he was responsible for shaping and delivering the vision for the department’s digital future, at a time of major welfare reform and programme change. He later joined the Cabinet Office as deputy director in the Government Digital Service, where he led the creation of the UK Government Transformation Strategy, published in February 2017.
In the NHS, Andrew serves as a non-executive director. He chairs the digital committee at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust. Before this appointment he spent six years in the same role at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, where he helped shape digital and data strategy in one of the UK’s top performing trusts. In 2025 he authored a high-profile report on what needs to change to meet the UK government’s digital ambitions for the NHS.
Earlier in his career Andrew worked in software and technology in both in-house and consultancy roles across the USA, Caribbean, Australia, South Africa and Europe. The common thread was the use of technology to improve business operations and provide services online. He was one of the founders of a tech startup that was sold to Vodafone in 2006 and helped form its mobile applications business.
Andrew holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.