be all about the future.

Its new Minister, the Hon. Michael Winfield, packed up his belongings at his former office on Church Street this week to join Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan inside the Cabinet Office.

Sen. Winfield brushed aside the suggestion his new portfolio makes him Sir John's right hand man. But the proximity of his new office to Bermuda's centre of political power underlines an importance to his new post he does not deny.

"There's nothing that gets me going more than challenge,'' he said. "There's no question that there's challenge here.'' In announcing a Cabinet shuffle on May 5, Sir John said the new Ministry represented a change in focus.

Sen. Winfield's former Ministry of Management, Information Services, and Telecommunications would be split, with the Hon. Leonard Gibbons assuming responsibility for Information Services. Sen. Winfield's new Ministry would be known as Management and Technology.

"It is very important that Government be concentrating on the future, and the change to the Ministry will promote that focus,'' the Premier said.

"Among other things, I will expect (Sen. Winfield) to work with me with the Commission on Competitiveness and the Employment Task Force, on the future of the military bases in Bermuda, and such other changes as will need to be addressed as a result of the changing world we are part of.'' The Senator cut his political teeth as president of the Under-40 Caucus that became "an unofficial youth wing'' of the United Bermuda Party in the late 1970s.

"I probably earned a reputation for being somewhat of a radical,'' he said.

"We didn't like the distance between Government and the people. We wanted to see a liberalisation of policy.'' It was a speech to that caucus by the young then-minister of Home Affairs, the Hon. John Swan, that inspired his political involvement.

As of two months ago, Sen. Winfield would no longer be eligible for membership in the now-defunct Under-40 Caucus. And the one-time "radical'' has the ear of the Premier. But he does does not feel his views have shifted.

The Under-40s were pushing for the vote for 18-year-olds and "bringing people into the decision-making process,'' he said.

"All that's reality now.'' He has managed every UBP campaign since 1980 and said he is "probably much more comfortable being the back room boy''. He will not be managing the next campaign.

Named to the Senate in 1987, he took the Management and Information Services portfolio in 1990, and took over as Government Leader in the Senate last year.

With the changed Ministry focus will come a shift in personnel, but no new jobs, Sen. Winfield said. "In simple terms, we're changing the focus from a current to a future mode.'' In Management Services, "we probably will be less involved with the administrative bureaucracy'', and more involved in acting on recommendations of the Commission on Competitiveness, Employment Task Force, and the committee examining the future of Daniel's Head. And while the Americans hold a long-term lease on the now-vacated US Naval Air Station Annex, there are possibilities there too, he said.

"There are significant pieces of Bermuda real estate that are in real terms coming back to Bermuda,'' he said. "That real estate offers opportunities.'' General manager of Cambridge Beaches since 1983, Sen. Winfield started in the hotel business as a front desk clerk at the Southampton Princess in 1974, but left there as manager.

Born in Canada but raised in Somerset, he studied zoology at the University of London before returning to Bermuda. He and his wife Lynne have three children: Alexander, 13; Benjamin, 11; and Kelly, 8.