When the chief information officer (CIO) title reached this side of the Atlantic from the C-Suite of corporate America most ICT proponents applauded. It showed the proper and serious recognition of the ICT function and its expert leaders that had been lacking in many respects. It marked the end of an era where IT was too often buried in the backwoods of Facilities or, more often, reported to Finance for no better reason than the legacy and tradition because that is largely where computing was first employed and applied.
We welcomed the C because it gave parity with the other corporate leaders. The ‘I’ for information served to lift the function that key bit above the technology itself to what it is actually for. All in all, in fact, the three words in the title seemed close to ideal, despite the lingering whiff of US corporate culture. Above all else, it seemed (as it does still) to bring ICT leadership well into a strategic, forward looking role and above the day-to-day uptime level.
Debate
So why have we been debating and parsing and analysing the CIO role ever since? Granted it is a multi-skill job, but then so is today’s CEO. In truth so are finance, operations and production, marketing and some of the more specialist functions, depending on the sector, like security or risk. So why do we obsess about the CIO role definitions and descriptions? Take that I for Information. Straightforward and clear, it might seem. How often do we talk about ‘turning data into information’? Yet business and technology media are full of suggestions about what alternative meanings for I might in some way enhance or focus the role better. The list includes Innovation, Intelligence, Integration and there are probably others that have appeared as one-time insights by writers and consultants.
But innovation and intelligence are areas of importance and focus-amongst others. The role, meaning the range of responsibilities or areas of relevance, is changing all the time. The place of ICT change has accelerated, the argument goes. True, but so has change and progress in almost every other area, from politics to cyberwarfare to the social habits of young people to global commerce and supply chains. From an ICT point of view, the salient point is that technology is so integral to all of this change, which is where the CIO role in the organisation is becoming more recognised and valued. This is even as we debate what exactly that role is or should be.
Q&A
"We don’t question the role of the CFO and we don’t even think about the job of the CEO, even though it has changed radically in the digital age from what it was say 30 years ago," says Frank Modruson, global CIO of Accenture for over a decade. "But the role of the CIO has genuinely changed greatly over time. Not that long ago it had a high proportion of elements we now think of as pretty fundamental and take for granted-like getting email to work. But the principle is still the same. It’s always about how technology can help the organisation to operate better and serve the customers and users better."
Agreeing that the job of the CIO always involves looking forward, Modruson emphasises that he believes also that it is about single person accountability. "In the famous phrase, ‘the buck stops here’ and you can’t ignore the present-and indeed the past-even if it is ultimately about the future. You certainly have to support and communicate with your operations people and let them do their jobs. Leaders and high command should always look at small scale maps, as General Patton said. That gives the big strategic picture while the details are best left to the guys who are closer to the action."
CIOs are generally found in larger organisations which are not noted for agility. "The usual analogy is the big ship which does not have the manoeuvrability of smaller craft. But the point is that all good captains can steer and control their ships as the want. It is a combination of practised experience and looking and planning ahead," says Modruson. "You sometimes encounter an organisation that has clearly been caught with antiquated technology. The question then is who was supposed to be looking ahead?"
Consumerisation
The consumerisation of ICT is enormously important, he believes. "In all sorts of areas we have consumer tech today that is better, in fact much better, than enterprise ICT. There is a decade of progress behind that. Intel has pointed out that since 2003 the consumer market has been buying more microprocessors than business and government. We have in fact become accustomed to seeing newer and smarter tech every day. It is very hard for a CIO or indeed anyone to foresee what will become tomorrow’s norm-and what is just today’s fad." He points to the early days of email when he used it first in 1979. "It was cool to leave messages for people. But there were so few other users that it was really almost recreational."
Identifying the new tech that would be useful to the organisation is certainly part of the CIO role but will seldom be a sole responsibility. But Modruson is firmly of the view that it is an essential part of the job to identify and remove the roadblocks that might prevent new technology being used productively and safely. "SMAC-social, mobile, analytics, cloud-are identified trends that are unlikely to go away. How they might be useful and used in your organisation are now essential questions for any CIO. The even more fundamental questions are about what roadblocks there might be to any such adoption."
In that general context, Modruson is convinced the network is now and will be a key CIO priority for some time to come. "Devices are less and less of an issue, support is already self-service or generic and the data centre will eventually go to some form of cloud. But the network is the key enabler, access to all your ICT resources and it simply has to be got right in terms of performance, resilience and security."
Public sector
While Modruson has a global view from a business position, Bill McCluggage is a public sector specialist. He took up the long-mooted position of Government CIO in June after a couple of years with EMC, deputy government CIO in the UK before that, and earlier still he was for six years CIO and director of eGovernment in Northern Ireland. So we can take it that he knows how the wheels of government turn.
"Today you just have to start from the totally new and different working environment that has been the result of ICT transformation over the last ten or fifteen years. We have moved from paper processes to being techno-centric and the consumer tech advances have given us mobility. For a lot of people, work is definitely not ‘where you go’ any more but what you do, anywhere and anytime, perhaps especially as you move up the managerial ranks."
The role of the CIO is essentially the same as it was, McCluggage says, except that it is in this contemporary ICT environment. "You are essentially like other specialists who have to interpret and translate with your experience and expertise and then advise and set directions for your board. The objective always is to improve business processes for better service delivery.
"I think it is a bit of a fallacy that the CIO role has a fixed, single definition-one size fits all. It is a collegiate, team-based role, not a pyramid where the CIO sits in glorious isolation at the top. It is all about collaboration and the different possible emphases will reflect the activities of the organisation and the outcomes that are needed and agreed. Industry sectors may have a lot in common and there are vertical systems solutions because of that. But other types of organisation are much more heterogeneous and the public sector certainly is enormously varied."
Outcome focus
"CIO or CTO or IT Director-and I’ve been all three-you can call it what you like but the focus will always be on outcomes," says McCluggage. "The objective is to deliver value. You can be an evangelist for ICT or you can find yourself being the nay-sayer because you have to advise on consequences. I am a strong proponent of open government and open data, for example. But I have to explain some of the consequences in terms of privacy, clean data and other business and technical issues that follow."
As the CIO of one of Ireland’s most successful commercial groups, United Drug, Tim Buckley acknowledges that he tends to be a pragmatist. The group has been expanding rapidly by acquisition in recent years and now enjoys sales of over €1 billion in Ireland and the UK, continental Europe and the USA. "I think the ongoing role of the CIO stems in many respects from the relationship with the CEO and the CFO. What they think, what they want to achieve, is what decides the strategy. The CIO has to listen and absorb and figure out ways to support that strategy and the objectives, short and long term."
Driving value
What the ‘C’ colleagues want from the CIO is to be with them in driving better business value. That most certainly embraces innovation, Buckley says, but there is scope also in the ICT domain itself and its traditional functions. "There is always value in running organisations better. We are currently involved in an investment of several million in just one element of our ICT that will deliver a minimum 20% saving annually in those costs. But the other side is innovative. United Drug is growing, so we need to do acquisitions better-the processes, the integration, the back office support systems need to be in fewer locations."
The characteristics of the CIO and whether the person should be a techie or a tech-savvy line of business manager is a common question. "I really think a pure techie is useless and just business experience is bad also. Personally, I’m torn between saying it should be 51% techie and 49% business or the other way round! But perhaps I’d give the majority vote to the business side."
But in fact Tim Buckley is sure that the role of the CIO is not yet mature anyway. "There is a lot of debate and input internationally about what it should be. But I think that with the possible exception of some American corporates there are not many that are yet close to the published theory. The USA is probably still a bit ahead of us in Europe in the evolution of the CIO role."
Information control
UCD is Ireland’s largest university with over 30,000 students and staff. The sheer range of activity in a modern university, including advanced technology and research, means that its ICT estate is also one of the largest investments in the country. Seamus Shaw is chief technology officer, the chosen title for the ICT leader here as increasingly in the USA and elsewhere because, as he points out, in a university the academic disciplines own the ‘information’. "I think the role is really 70% to 80% communication and it is a very political job because you have to persuade and explain and often push hard for agreement."
"We are very driven by the hopes and expectations of the 17 and 18 year olds who join us every year. We offer a very open service, with everybody equal and no locking down. The idea is that we govern by policy-and all users sign up to an agreement-rather anything heavier," Seamus Shaw explains. "The entire ICT budget is centralised at university level with costings analysed and allocated as simply as possible-by the square meter, generally."
Some ICT challenges are different. "We have had to deal with BYOD since we first offered Internet on campus years ago and it has really never been a problem. Essentially, our role is to broker services to all UCD users. We have to make decisions about investment and architecture and other ICT choices but the driver is giving our people what they need across a very wide range of activities and requirements. So we moved everyone to Gmail, for instance, because there really is no value for us in maintaining our own system anymore."
Five year plan
Shaw has an interesting observation about strategic thinking. "There was a call for a five-year plan for ICT, like other elements of university planning, but I had to say no-at least in respect of much of the possible detail-because I believe and pointed out that ICT is just too dynamic for that approach. On the other hand, we are clear about where we are going and in particular about the new kinds of skill sets that will be required.
"The advances in analytics, for example, mean that we need people with those skills allied to domain knowledge-higher education has its own unique culture-to assist colleagues and even students in applying those new tools productively in their own work where there is potential value. Visualisation of data, for example, can be of enormous value in all sorts of fields that might not traditionally have been associated with high powered ICT."
ICT departments as well as the job of the CIO or CTO are changing, says Shaw. "We just don’t need to do heavy lifting any more. We do, on the other hand, use an ever-widening range of service models and we have to grow and develop the skills to manage those effectively. On the other hand, we see our network infrastructure as the key to delivering the ICT services for a long time yet. There have been major step changes in education. Students today expect to be able to read notes or look things up on a tablet on the top of the bus to college. Lectures are still with us but there is a lot more Q&A and education is much more about personal discovery. Our job is to deliver the ICT services to enable and support and develop this changing-and exciting-world of education."
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