Christmas is a coming and the CIO role is changing, but to what?

Christmas is fast approaching so we should do the annual review of what is the role of the CIO going forward.

Historically some wags have promoted that CIO equals Career Is Over, I don't accept that, world domination is still high on the agenda. I do believe that the role is changing, although I am not totally sure to what. When I look at many organisations the shape and design of the CIO role and his/her team vary enormously. It ranges from the very business orientated, main board change agent, to the traditional IT Director focussing on IT Services. It ranges from fully in-sourced, to predominately outsourced. So coming up with one design is inappropriate, so I won't do that.

However the "CIO" role is changing as enterprise IT continues to be consumerised. Not only that I think there is a move towards the CIO title being taken over by a very important person indeed – your Customer, or in my case the Citizen. Yes the Customer (or Citizen) Information Owner. This is not the marketing department who believe they own all the customer information, nor is it the salesman who historically attempted to keep all his data on his clients so only he/she could sell to them. This is the Customer/Citizen owning their own information and determining what they do with it.

William Heath has blogged extensively and passionately on this subject. I am still working through the consequences; I think I understand the theory but I have more work to do to understand the consequences across all business operations and what this means in reality. Would citizens get credit from their financial institution if they didn't tick the box that asks permission to share their data with credit agencies and organisations who want to offer you a deal of a lifetime?

So if the customer/citizen becomes the CIO what does the CIO become... time for a new TLA; How about CCO, the Chief Collaboration Officer? In our world of ever decreasing time to launch our products and services and our increasing reliance on global supply chains and a multi supplier (IT and business service) world, increasingly our roles demand substantial collaboration to get the job done.

We have always had to collaborate internally, and indeed quite a bit externally, but it is going to grow. So for now I will vote for CCO. It would be much more fun if we had the choice of four letters, and no I do not want any suggestions this is family blog.

Have a very merry Christmas and I hope 2010 is a great year for you.

Comments

[Richard Parkes Cordock]

Hi John, I'm intrigued as to what the CIO does too. Years ago when I worked in software, I always thought the CIO and CTO were similar, but perhaps I am out of date.

What I would like to know is this... is the CIO the right person to speak to about using Enterprise 2.0 to drive innovation and employee engagement.

This presentation I've put together shares my thoughts on E2.0, but finding the right person in a company to speak with is not so easy. Perhaps the CIO is my point of contact!.

Here's the presentation: www.enterprisementor.com/enterprise20

Richard

[Simon Barnard]

It's an interesdting topic "collaboration" it means many different things to many different people. Email, sharing of information through different systems, sharing through social public sites, twitter, facebook etc. It can also mean working face to face on projects and other business, social activities. In fact it means, “teamwork, partnership, cooperation, association, alliance”. All obvious one would think but when we take this context to the digital world, in many cases it falls apart, because of legacy systems, differing personal views on which systems should be employed for specific activities. Once there is one form of electronic communication standard then may be just may be – it will work in the digital world.

Regarding personal data: I always believed that the data that is held about any individual is owned by the individual and should be able to be accessed by the individual from anywhere. ( there will always be certain personal data that cannot viewed security service information / police etc, nation security issues). I remember working for a very well known anti virus software company many years ago, when AV was the preserve of the very large enterprise, take a look now, AV is everywhere, literally.

I believe that data will go the same way, and more specifically data that related personal intelligence ( or business intelligence as we know it today in the corporate world ). It will be the leaders of BI 2.0, the new rules companies that will make this happen, I can see that coming. As we have more personal information to view, we will need tools that will help us to decide what is important, when and how do we use that information. This will apply to banking, utilities, medical data, DWP personal data plus many other personal sources.
Only my views, but to answer the question: I see the role of the CIO within the public area becoming more complex and a true visionary is needed to lead the public sector IT groups.

[William]

Ask not what the control shift does for CIOs; ask what CIOs can do for the control shift, I reckon.

I take the view it's the right thing to do.

I think the reasons include efficacy, eliminating waste, natural justice & human dignity, and lawful data processing. I just think the "gather, scrape and share all the personal data we can" or CRM model collapses under the weight of its own mathematical impossibility when we try to personalise services. And that mixing the public services and security agendas is to the detriment of both.

But you're completely right that this means working out the implications for all departments. There may be a "hare & tortoise" analogy here, but I prefer to see it as careful idealists, rightly prompted, thinking through something which life's heavy lifters will in due course relish the chance to implement.

Whatever happens, dont ask me to be a CIO.

I've blogged about this here - http://ctrl-shift.co.uk/2009/12/cios-and-the-contrl-shift/

[Robin Wilton]

Thanks John - a very thoughful and thought-provoking post. One suggestion, where the idea of citizen-managed data is concerned, is that you might want to define CCO as "Chief Consent Officer"... Just a thought.

Merry Christmas, and may 2010 take you closer to your goal - even if it is world domination ;^)