The Ghost Directors

Senior directors at Digital Health and Care Wales hold titles that carry real power: Chief Operating Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, Director of Programmes, Executive Director of Operations. They control budgets worth tens of millions of pounds. They make procurement decisions that lock the Welsh NHS into contracts lasting years. They oversee programme delivery for systems on which patient care depends.

And they are, to any member of the public attempting to find out who they are, effectively invisible.

This is not a question of personal privacy. These are publicly funded senior officials earning six-figure salaries. The expectation of transparency comes with the role. Yet a pattern has emerged at DHCW in which individuals holding director-level positions maintain no discernible public profile whatsoever — no LinkedIn presence, no web biography on the DHCW website, no record of conference appearances, no evidence of giving testimony to Senedd committees. They occupy positions of significant public trust and spend significant public money, yet they cannot be found by anyone looking from the outside.

Michelle Sell — Director of Programmes

Michelle Sell has held three director-level titles at DHCW or its predecessor organisation in the space of approximately four years. She is, at the time of writing, Director of Programmes — the person with direct responsibility for programme delivery across DHCW's portfolio.

This is a consequential role. DHCW's programme delivery record is the primary reason the organisation was placed under Level 3 government escalation in 2024, the most serious intervention available to Welsh Government short of dissolution. The escalation letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care cited "serious concerns about the ability to deliver major programmes." The Director of Programmes is the person most directly responsible for the function that triggered that intervention.

Yet Michelle Sell maintains near-zero public visibility:

• No LinkedIn profile found. A search for her name returns no matching professional profile on the platform used by the overwhelming majority of senior digital health professionals in the UK.
• No DHCW website biography. She does not appear on the organisation's "Meet the Board" page or in any publicly accessible staff directory.
• No conference appearances found. Digital health is a sector with an active conference circuit — Digital Health Rewired, NHS ConfedExpo, HETT, the Welsh NHS Confederation conference. No record of Michelle Sell presenting at or participating in any of these events has been identified.
• No Senedd committee appearances. She has not given evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, the Health and Social Care Committee, or any other Senedd body examining DHCW's performance.

Three director-level titles in four years, and the person responsible for programme delivery at an organisation under government intervention for programme delivery failures cannot be found by anyone looking from outside.

The question is straightforward: how can the public, the Senedd, journalists, or health professionals scrutinise the performance of someone they cannot identify?

Chris Collis — Digital Transformation Lead

Chris Collis holds the title of Digital Transformation Lead at DHCW. His professional background, to the extent it can be reconstructed from publicly available sources, is in digital television security and standards development — a legitimate technical field, but one with no obvious connection to NHS digital health.

The pathway from digital television standards to leading digital transformation for the Welsh NHS is unusual. It is not necessarily disqualifying — people change sectors — but it is the kind of career transition that would normally be accompanied by some public evidence of relevant qualifications, experience, or domain expertise in health informatics, clinical systems, or public sector digital delivery.

No such evidence has been identified:

• Not a board member. Chris Collis does not appear on DHCW's board or in its published governance structure.
• No DHCW web profile. No biography or staff listing found on the DHCW website.
• No Senedd appearances. No record of giving evidence to any committee examining DHCW or NHS Wales digital matters.
• No conferences or publications found. No record of presenting at digital health conferences or publishing in sector journals.
• Education: University of Birmingham. No specific degree subject or qualification level has been publicly disclosed.

Digital transformation is not a peripheral function. It encompasses the strategy for how NHS Wales transitions from legacy systems to modern digital infrastructure — decisions that affect every clinician and every patient in the country. The person leading that function should be visible enough for their qualifications and track record to be assessed.

Sam Lloyd — Executive Director of Operations

Sam Lloyd holds the title of Executive Director of Operations at DHCW, a board-level position with a disclosed salary in the band of £125,000-£130,000 (total remuneration £150,000-£155,000 including pension contributions).

A review of publicly available information reveals the following:

• No academic qualifications, university degrees, or professional certifications publicly disclosed. This does not mean none exist — but for a board-level director at a public body earning over £150,000 in total remuneration, the absence of any publicly available record of professional qualifications is notable.
• Background entirely in English public health agencies. Sam Lloyd's prior career, to the extent it can be traced through public records, was spent in public health bodies in England. No prior experience in the Welsh health system has been identified.
• No prior Welsh NHS experience found. The Welsh NHS operates under different legislation, different governance structures, different commissioning arrangements, and different digital infrastructure than NHS England. It is a distinct system. Arriving at board level with no prior exposure to it is a significant gap.

The relevance of this profile becomes sharper in context. The Level 3 escalation imposed on DHCW in 2024 cited "serious concerns about the ability to deliver major programmes." Programme delivery is an operational function. It sits squarely within the remit of an Executive Director of Operations. The escalation reflects directly on this role.

The Vanishing Salaries

In the course of reviewing DHCW's published annual accounts across multiple financial years, a specific anomaly has been identified: in at least one case, an individual's salary disclosure vanished from the accounts while they continued to hold a director-level role at the organisation.

This requires explanation. NHS bodies in Wales are required to disclose the remuneration of senior managers in their annual accounts. These disclosures follow a defined format and are subject to audit. They do not disappear by accident. The accounts are prepared by the finance team, reviewed by external auditors, and signed off by the board.

When a salary disclosure vanishes from one year's accounts to the next, while the individual remains in post, there are limited explanations: the role was reclassified to fall below the disclosure threshold; the individual's contractual arrangement changed; or the disclosure was deliberately omitted. Each of these explanations raises further questions that DHCW has not publicly addressed.

This is not an administrative oversight. These are formal annual accounts, prepared under statutory requirements, subject to external audit. The disappearance of a salary disclosure is a decision, not an error.

Why This Matters

These are not middle managers. They are not administrative staff. They are the people who decide what systems Wales buys, how much it pays, who delivers the work, and when. They sit in procurement meetings. They evaluate supplier bids. They sign off project milestones. They authorise expenditure. They report — or choose not to report — programme status to the board.

When these individuals cannot be identified by members of the public, they cannot be questioned. Their qualifications cannot be assessed. Their track records cannot be examined. Their potential conflicts of interest cannot be investigated. Their performance cannot be scrutinised against the outcomes they were hired to deliver.

This is not an oversight in DHCW's communications. The organisation has a website. It has a "Meet the Board" page. It publishes annual accounts. It has the infrastructure to make its leadership visible. The fact that multiple director-level individuals remain effectively invisible to external scrutiny is a pattern, and patterns are choices.

Consider the contrast. In the private sector, any company spending hundreds of millions of pounds would have its senior leadership team publicly identified, with professional biographies, track records, and qualifications available for investors, customers, and regulators to review. In comparable public bodies across the UK, senior directors routinely have published profiles, speak at industry events, and give evidence to parliamentary committees.

At DHCW, the people responsible for delivering digital infrastructure for the entire Welsh NHS — an organisation spending in excess of £78 million per year and currently under the most serious level of government intervention — can hold director-level titles while remaining invisible to the public whose money they spend and whose health system they are supposed to be building.

This is the architecture of unaccountability. It does not happen by accident. It is maintained because it serves the interests of those who benefit from operating without scrutiny. And it will continue until someone maps it, names it, and demands that it end.