Derek Handley had a win with The Hyperfactory but his next major venture Snakk Media has not yet rewarded investors.

ANALYSIS It is now an "open secret" that entrepreneur Derek Handley was about to be announced as the country's first chief technology officer last week.

But the question technology leaders are asking is whether the bungling of the recruitment process will make it harder for Handley to be successful, assuming he is still confirmed in the role as appears all but certain.

For those who missed the drama, Communications Minister Clare Curran had been expected to confirm the appointment of the country's first ever national chief technology officer last week.

That was after the first search came to nothing in January, disappointing 60 candidates, none of whom were judged appropriate.

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It is understood that it was while Handley's appointment was being finalised, that it emerged that he and Curran had had an undocumented meeting, at his request, in February.

Curran's key offence – which has seen her demoted and kicked out of the Cabinet – was not so much in having the meeting, as "omitting" to mention it in an answer to a written parliamentary question.

Clare Curran took for the blame for the initial failure to recruit a chief technology officer for the country in January and has been demoted for creating complications during the second attempt.

NZTech executive director Graeme Muller believes Handley would be a good appointment who could still be confirmed in the job soon.

He says it would be a shame if last week's "messing around and mistakes" diminished the impact of the role.

But the awkward hiatus provides a perfect void for backchat.

Handley would already have had his work cut out winning everyone over.

The Hong-Kong born, Kiwi-educated entrepreneur was best known in business circles for co-founding mobile marketing consultancy The Hyperfactory in 2001, and then selling it to a United States buyer in 2010 for more than $10 million.

However, he has had less commercial success as the founder and former chairman of Snakk Media, which is listed on the junior NXT exchange with a market capitalisation of just $813,000.

SUPPLIED Handley set out his stall for the chief technology officer role in a speech at Techweek in May.

In 2013, Snakk raised $6.5m from 1200 investors who would now be down about 98 per cent on their investments.

Although Handley left Snakk's board in 2015, before the worst of that downturn, negative postings on Snakk Media at online forum Sharetrader demonstrate the depth of some investors' lingering resentment.

As CTO, Handley would have a potentially highly influential role in charting a digital future for the country which could touch on a wide range of government initiatives.

Creating the role – which comes with a salary of up to $400,000 and a $100,000 travel budget – was the flagship of Labour's ICT policy before the election.

But it is one that is still vaguely defined and there are different views as to what the job should be or whether it should even exist.

Few doubt Handley would be an enthusiastic voice for digital technology and "inclusion".

Handley appeared to set out his case for the CTO job in a speech at a Techweek networking event in May.

His speech centred on the "digital divide", which has been a key interest for Curran, drawing attention to the predicaments faced by children who do not have internet access at home.

Handley referred to the CTO role in that speech and set out the following "to do" list.

- Creating meaningful work and daily livelihoods for ordinary citizens, in the face of automation and in the end, artificial intelligence.

- A fully renewable transportation fleet.

- More capital, resources and ideas for many more bold new companies that shape the future.

- Pioneering protein, meat and milk grown far from the paddocks of a traditional farm.

- Working out how we become better parents, brothers, friends, neighbours and citizens – face to face, not just Facebook to Facebook.

In other recent media appearances, Handley has enthused about the potential of blockchain technology and "initial coin offerings" while acknowledging that with regard to the latter, there would be thousands of "losers" for every winner.

Absent from Handley's Techweek speech was any direct mention of the mission that Xero founder Rod Drury, ASB Bank and consultant KPMG appeared to have in mind when they lobbied for the creation of a CTO prior to the election.

Drury's idea was that the CTO would serve as a bridge between the private and public sectors, coordinating strategy between the two.

The "strategic insights panel" backed by KPMG and ASB even suggested the role could be partly funded by the private sector.

That would suggest that they saw a CTO removing obstacles to the delivery of public services by private sector technology businesses – going into bat for business interests in other words.

State Services Minister Chris Hipkins will now complete the appointment process after hearing back from officials this week on whether Curran's February meeting with Handley had had any undue bearing.

A spokesman for Hipkins confirmed that his role would simply be to run a "ruler over the process", and not to relitigate what the job of the CTO should involve.

So in all likelihood, Handley will be confirmed in the role within days.

Refusing Handley the job because of an error that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has already clearly acknowledged was "no fault of his own" would presumably open a whole new can of worms from an employment law perspective, so doesn't seem very likely.

But it is an unfortunate prelude to a rather strange job.