This blog will cover a panel discussion at the Catalyst Burton Conference, hosted by Bob Blakely, that discussed the role of the CIO. The panel included Eric McNeil from IBM who, in my own personal opinion, gave one of the most enlightening speeches at the conference.
Eric's premise was the role of the CIO was changing dramatically and, this change was going to affect all of IT. He gave a short story about a CEO meeting the CFO in an elevator. The CEO queries the CFO about what's happening. The CFO tells the CEO about three major metrics he is monitoring the fiscal health of the enterprise.
The CEO later gets in an elevator with the CIO. The CEO queries the CIO on how the enterprise is doing. The CIO proceeds to tell the CEO about 200 different projects all of which are mission critical. The CEO is confused.
Eric's point was that CIO's role is going to change from one viewing IT as a series of projects to one where it is measured against enterprise business risk and cost. He said that he was already seeing this change occur in the financial industry.
Eric pointed that many new CIO's are coming from audit and compliance and most have little or no IT experience. He said that the CIO's were taking enterprise business risk and concentrating on the top business risks. They were then taking IT budgets and focusing on reducing and managing risk for these top priorities while accepting risk for lower risk business processes.
He said that many IT departments were struggling mightily with this change. The language of IT was now begin forced to become the language of business. Many IT employees were struggling to work with this new type of CIO.
The presentation was music to my ears! I have always wondered when the IT techno crowd would be forced into measuring performance against business risk? That time is just arriving. As this unfolds, watch out for significant change in IT priorities and ways of doing business.
Guy
www.authenticationworld.com
guy.huntington@authenticationworld.com
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