The president of the Society of Information Technology Management has apologised for leaking confidential documents to the press.

Richard Steele, who is CIO of Newham county council and was inaugurated only yesterday as SOCITM president, sent to a journalist a document compiled by the public sector IT advisory body comparing the performance of various county councils.

Steele presented the document as proof that his decision to overturn a policy of using open source software in favour of a ten-year contract with software giant Microsoft had been beneficial to Newham council. However, according to some SOCITM members the document was confidential material.

"The information about the councils is confidential. It's not published to anyone else,” Anna Hooper, SOCITM benchmarking consultant told The Inquirer website. “This is extremely important."

Steele has apologised to the other councils involved, saying that he had included data on their performance by mistake.

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