CIO is a fine title. It rolls off the tongue more readily than most TLAs in business and especially in ICT, and it has the highly important element of that ‘C’. ‘Chief’ is always good and now that computing has reached the C-suite it confirms importance, status, power (possibly) and all the rest of those senior officer things that are essential for that other ‘C’-Career. The thing is, the C and the O really translate simply as manager, granted that we are talking about the top slot in the function.
But like ‘secretary’ or ‘executive’ that is one of the most ambiguous and abused words in the organisational lexicon. Not least because as in this case the relevant function is clearly a support one. However ICT-dependent the organisation is-and that includes those which are digital and virtual by their very nature-the technology is there to support and deliver something else. It is not the Production function, although it bears comparison with supply chain or logistics. It could even, in that despised analogy that all computer people have hated with a vengeance for generations, be compared with Facilities Management.
Yes, you read that right. Because the key letter in that 21st century title is the ‘I’ for Information. That is what the CIO actually deals in and with, and what the job is for. The facilities management end of it comes in with the basics (no offence to you nice FM guys). The doors have to be open in the morning, the lights have to work, the caffeine kettle better be operational and the loos should be clean. Yes, you’ve got the picture. There is not a lot of point rhapsodising about predictive analytics if the PCs take forever to boot up, servers are slow when everyone logs on in the morning and security authentication is so randomly complicated that every single employee has the code written down somewhere close to hand.
Information: we want it all the time, every time. We need to get it quickly and easily, use it freely and never lose it. In a final allusion to FM, it’s what some US consultant years ago rightly called the ‘hygiene factors’-those things in any organisation that no one notices or values until they go wrong. Then they stink to high heaven very quickly. So yes, dear CIO, ‘keeping the lights on’ may not be what got you to the C-suite but it is a key element in retaining the job.
Information: you don’t own it, mostly you don’t create it, you may not even have access to all of it, but every last byte is your responsibility. When you reduce everything to the absurdly simple, it is clear that in the greater scheme of things the hardware really does not matter a damn. The applications are fundamental to using the information for personal or corporate purposes, but they could change overnight. Do we use MS Word or OpenOffice or Gdocs? The quality of the content will not be affected by any of them. Word processor of choice (usually habit, really) or convenience and it is exactly the same for devices. A big colour screen will make it a lot more pleasant to work with that spreadsheet or clever pivot table but neither it nor the application will correct the erroneous assumptions my predecessor made in setting up the damned thing.
Information: it is at least one of the keys to why more women are making it to the CIO level even as the pronounced gender gap in other functions and in general management. They are by nature better attuned to the real balance of priorities, in corporate as in real life. They are not side-tracked by go-faster stripes and being technologically state of the art. They know that fashion is for people to wear. Technology is to get things done. Men can do the same thing, of course, and the majority of CIOs do so. The suggestion is simply that male ICT managers have to curb their boyish auto-enthusiasm for shiny new gadgets while women will always think first of the longer term survival of the family/species/organisation. None of which is to propose the superiority of either gender, just a welcome for the significant share of CIO and senior ICT management jobs held by women in Ireland today.
Information: it is the fundamental reason for the truth and value of that old mantra, now more than two decades old: do what you do best and outsource the rest. It is why managed web computing services (that cloud thing) will continue to do well and evolve. Any organisation and certainly business is the sum of its activity, people and information. Throw out every current machine and system and transfer the information to the next generation of technology and it can continue almost seamlessly on the platform of its unique information. Yes, of course there are bespoke systems developed over years of hard graft. Why we would do that is a legitimate question. It ain’t broke, so why fix it, continues to be a valid attitude.
But the core survival question is what makes an organisation distinctive, unique, successful so far, ready to adapt and change? The essence is always its information, its genetic code and accumulated corporate knowledge-perhaps even wisdom. What the organisation actually does, make and sell goods or run a country, and the people who make it up, are the other and inseparable elements. But the point is that you could change all of the physical stuff-products, premises, servers and systems-and still survive and thrive with the continuity DNA.
All organisations are conceptually virtual when you start thinking about things this way. Does it matter what devices people use, so long as they can access their own work information? Does it matter where that corporate information is stored and if it were different tomorrow so what? We shunt data between drives and servers all the time, so a step further out to a service provider’s whirring disks hardly makes much difference.
Information: there are some practical, security and technical considerations about outsourced data storage-as there certainly are about all of today’s XaaS managed services. But they are more and more just at the practical and almost mechanical level. If you can have infrastructure and platform as a service, not to mention processing power on tap and massive data reservoirs, investing in smaller scale replica systems for your own corporate requirements begins to seem almost a quaint 20th century hangover.
If your people can access all the information they need, your organisation’s activity can proceed successfully. Of course they also need access devices, quite probably a set of them for different situations, but that’s hardly an issue.
Information: Once you have it, safe and accessible, the organisation is a virtual reality and everything else is just physical detail. It will all change tomorrow, or the day after anyway. What endures is that information, growing and maturing and evolving.
Information: now for the snag-just having the stuff is not enough. People have to apply it and use it and share it. Sharing means communications and Communications-as-a-Service (telecommunications, if you prefer the 20th century term) is the senior member of the XaaS clan and the one with accumulated infirmities. Look behind the façade of the World Wide Web and its coverage rate of what, 80% or 60% of the real world, and it is clear we have a long way to go. Ever hear of the 50×15 Foundation? It is a laudable collaborative project of public and private organisations to help bring affordable Internet access and computing capability to 50% of the world’s population by 2015.
This small island is aiming to be a world class centre of Cloud Computing and already has enough data centre capability to power a high proportion of Europe’s ICT-great. But do we have internet access for every citizen? The Falklands have 100% coverage, by the way, so we have a target to aim at. Northern Ireland claims availability of broadband to 100% of households, which is not quite the same thing but excellent anyway.
Information: in this little Republic most of that 21st century stuff about virtual organisations and XaaS is a rural myth. Communications (CaaS) is what makes it possible, but try to set up an information business in this Information Age (or was that initiative quietly dropped?) and you will rapidly discover that 5-8mbs ADSL or possibly 3mbs GSM is your lot. ISDN is still in the national service catalogue somewhere, but of course that is not even broadband.
Yes, we have state-of-the-art MANs, sadly under-utilised, and our schools will mostly have been dragged into the 21st century by next year sometime. Not to mention all those data centres with Big Pipes.
Information: yes indeed, you could set up and run or convert a modern enterprise to a very effective organisation with no ICT investment. BYOD, screens of personal choice for the team members and a set of authentication methods for all those managed XaaS resources. Pay as you go, no CapEx, go conquer the world-so long as you are tethered in a city or good sized town. Otherwise you’re on your own, mate.
And there are no CIO vacancies.
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