EDS, the American IT services group, has recruited Air Chief Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall, former vice-chief of the defence staff, to lead a global advisory board on defence contracts.

Texas-based EDS, which was founded by former presidential candidate Ross Perot, is one of the British government’s biggest IT contractors.

It has been harshly criticised for its role in some problematic government IT contracts, notably the Treasury’s tax-credit scheme — a deal it eventually lost — and its contract to provide IT systems and support to the Child Support Agency.

But last year it led the consortium that won a key contract from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to revamp and upgrade the armed forces’ IT equipment.

The Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) deal is eventually expected to be worth about £4 billion over a number of years.

Bagnall, who left the MoD in July, said that he hoped

EDS would eventually become the “partner of choice” for the MoD and other Whitehall departments.

“If you are going to get the best out of these new systems, you need a long-term trading relationship,” he said.

Bagnall said he had been approached by a number of defence contractors after leaving the MoD, but had decided to join EDS because he had been impressed by the company’s record on an earlier armed forces personnel contract, and its efforts on DII.

He said improved IT could help the British military in a range of areas.

“We are not just talking about back-office systems, but things close to the front line like mission-planning and tactical awareness tools,” he said.

Michael Jordan, EDS’s chairman, said the defence council aimed to exploit the expertise the company had developed in DII and in a similar contract for the US Navy.

The expert advice would also help the company to spot opportunities and trends in military contracting.

“It fills a void for us,” Jordan said. “We have a desperate need for more expertise in global defence issues.”

The council, which will eventually have eight members from around the world, held its first meeting in London last week.

Jordan defended the company’s work at the Child Support Agency.

This month work and pensions secretary John Hutton announced a comprehensive review of the agency, which will be carried out by Sir David Henshaw, the outgoing Liverpool city council chief executive. But Hutton insisted the EDS IT system would not be scrapped.

Jordan said: “We have made a lot of progress in the past two- and-a-half years. It is a very complex piece of work, putting together a lot of legacy systems, but we have taken a tremendous amount of cost out of their systems. I think this is now a permanent relationship that will do both sides a lot of good.”