Evolution of the CIO

To some critics, the IT Department is no more than a glorified filing cabinet for the enterprise. Although IT has a strategic role as the custodian of the company's information resources, it has often taken its 'technology' role too seriously and failed to appreciate that it was actually serving business needs.

The head of the IT Department, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has traditionally been charged with various roles: keeping the lights on, implementing IT-centric business change, and aligning (and subsequently integrating) IT with business strategy.

Now, those roles have changed to keeping the business running, implementing business transformation and enabling business innovation. In other words, given today's growing use of new technologies such as Web 2.0 and collaboration or unified communications, IT is becoming a necessary business innovation driver to counter today's uncertain economic landscape. Indeed, CIOS are being asked, 'What can your department do to help us get through this downturn?'

At the heart of this will be Web 2.0 tools and particularly collaborative technologies, which impact the way an organisation communicates with itself, how it innovates and the way it interacts with its partners. Outsourcing too has freed up some of the CIOs' time enabling them to get involved in areas other than technology management.

A sign of how CIOs' roles have changed is that few actually regard themselves now as being in charge of information. According to DAV's Enigma Group media partner, Information Age, which has examined this evolution of the CIO role, one executive now describes his remit as 'cross-functional business process organisation.'

To meet this new cross-functional role, the CIO is having to develop new skills, notably relationship management allied to business nous. Indeed, having effective relationship management skills is being seen as a prerequisite in making the transition to becoming a best-in-class CIO.

Traditionally the CIO has been seen as a technologist. Now, however, there is a generation of equally IT-savvy - and business literate - executives coming through the ranks of the business who may be more suitable for the CIO's position than those who come simply from an IT background. So, aspiring CIOs need to develop their business skills as much as their technical know-how.

According to the British Computer Society, IT is now being viewed as an alternative route to the top within organisations, instead of the familiar route of law or finance. Today's 'Y' Generation understands that technology drives business change and innovation, so that, eventually, IT leadership will become synonymous with business leadership.

However, that does not mean CIOs necessarily want to become CEOs. Information Age reports that 62 percent of CIOs have no desire to become a CEO, and, because they are not driven by ego or social recognition, those CIOs are more likely to fulfil a critical role for the company as mediator, collaborator, innovator and co-ordinator.

This is increasingly a trend that DAV concurs with and has seen evolving through its close relationship with clients across all sectors. To find out more about some of the work DAV has undertaken for its customers, please click on the adjacent link.

Acknowledgements to DAV's Enigma sponsoring partner, Information Age. Extracts are taken from the October edition of the magazine article entitled: The Evolution of the CIO which can be accessed via www.information-age.com.