Digital and IT expert Steve Burrows has hit out after his application for an important new government role went astray.

Mr Burrows applied for the ‘hugely significant’ job of non- executive chairman of the new Digital Isle of Man agency.

But alarm bells started to ring after Mr Burrows failed to receive any acknowledgement.

He was eventually told by a recruitment officer in the Office of Human Resources there had been a ‘massive admin error’.

The officer said in an email to Mr Burrows: ‘It seems to have been left in a desk draw [sic] unfortunately.’

And Mark Lewin, chief executive of the Department for Enterprise, has apologised to Mr Burrows on behalf of the government.

Mr Lewin said in an email: ‘On behalf of the government I can only apologise that you have been left feeling hugely disappointed and have wasted your time.’

Mr Burrows, who has been writing a fortnightly IT Matters column in Business News for nearly four years, said: ‘To say I am miffed would be an understatement.’

He added that the ‘farce’ had dented his confidence in the government.

He also called for a tightening up of procedures so ‘nothing like this can happen to anyone else’.

He stressed in an interview with Business News: ‘The message I want to get across is not particularly about myself and not about individuals. It is about the failure of process, the failure to include people, the failure of our government civil service to actually behave responsibly and conscientiously. And as a consequence we all lose out.’

As reported last week in Business News four new executive agencies are being established called Digital Isle of Man, Business Isle of Man, Visit Isle of Man and Finance Isle of Man.

Mr Burrows told Business News: ‘The Department for Enterprise was seeking to get the best candidates they could for these four incredibly important agencies, which are really quite critical to the economic future of the island.

‘And if they did not get all the applications passed through to them from the Office of Human Resources then the Department For Enterprise and ultimately the island is as much a victim as those individuals such as me whose application did not get forwarded.

‘It is not a Department of Enterprise failure in any respect, it is the Office of Human Resources who has let the whole agency appointment process down.’

The saga began after Mr Burrows decided he would apply for the £7,500 per annum part-time role of non-executive chairman of the new digital agency. It was one of a number of appointments announced by the Department for Enterprise as part of a re-focused department ‘better equipped to deliver the needs of the economy and businesses in the Isle of Man.’

Mr Burrows spent two days preparing his application which he hand-delivered in a clearly marked A4 manila envelope to the reception desk of the Office of Human Resources on the second floor of Illiam Dhone House, Circular Road, Douglas, at 9am on the day of the closing date for applications, March 20.

Mr Burrows, who lives in Surby in the south of the island, said he started to get suspicious after a while when he failed to receive any acknowledgement for the application.

Mr Burrows became concerned when he failed to receive an acknowledgement and on April 11 he emailed the OHR asking for confirmation it had received his application for the role.

Two days later he received a reply from a recruitment officer at the OHR stating they could not see his application on ‘Jobtrain’, the IT system in which received applications are dealt with after being received. Mr Burrows again confirmed he had hand-delivered his application to OHR’s reception desk, but after that there was ‘silence’.

After a further week he wrote to Laurence Skelly and Mark Lewin, minister and chief executive, respectively, at the Department for Enterprise, pointing out that because he had heard nothing more from the department or the OHR he was assuming his application had been mislaid.

He told them in the email: ‘To say I am miffed would be of course a massive understatement. I wasted a couple of days of my life preparing the application and personally delivering it only for it to somehow go AWOL.’

Mr Burrows told Business News his application letter was very thorough covering four pages and ‘double the length of one of my IT Matters columns for the Examiner’.

A couple of days later Mr Burrows received an early morning response from Mr Lewin in which he said: ‘To say we were disappointed to learn that you had indeed applied but it had gone missing was also an understatement.’

‘Right from the outset we set this up to be an inclusive and open process.’

He added: ‘Whilst we knew that you had expressed interest in the run up to the launch we checked with OHR for any paper applications on and shortly after the closing date, and were told there were none.

‘By the time we learnt of your query late last week the process was almost complete for the roles - candidates had been shortlisted and the communication process was already underway.

‘On behalf of the government I can only apologise that you have been left feeling hugely disappointed and have wasted your time.

‘In relation to the OHR aspect I have asked them to respond directly to you - they seem to have no record of the application.’

Mr Lewin added: ‘I am genuinely sorry that your application was not logged and not put into the process and hope that it will not dissuade you from the very positive work that you are doing in raising awareness of many relevant topics on our island through your articles and also from getting involved with the board to offer your advice in some capacity.’

Mr Burrows later received a reply from a recruitment officer at the Office of Human Resources pointing out that they were sorry for the inconvenience and there had been a ‘massive admin error’.

The officer said: ‘I am terribly sorry your application has been mislaid and you have missed out the chance of applying for the agency chair position.’ They promised they would ‘review the process for paper applications to ensure something like this does not happen again.

‘All staff who cover reception will need to be reminded that applications are to be passed directly to the team to be uploaded on to Jobtrain.’

Mr Burrows later emailed back asking where his application had ended up and requesting it be returned to him.

He received a further reply two days later from the OHR officer stating that the application had been placed in the ‘confidential waste bin’.

The officer wrote: ‘Sorry I did not think to check whether you would want the application back.’

She also confirmed that the application had since been located in a ‘criteria tray’.

But she added: ‘But before then it seems to have been left in a desk draw [sic] unfortunately.’

Mr Burrows said his faith in government processes had taken a severe knocking.