Two hats
Tomás Ó Midheach is chief operating officer of the AIB Group and, very relevantly in our context, was formerly its chief digital officer. “I think the digital role is principally about stimulus to change and it should report to the COO, particularly if there is a broad remit for change which will of course involve application change. Broadly speaking that is what we have done here. Application development and change is under the CDO. The big platforms, storage, maintenance are the responsibility of the CIO. The traditional things essentially. You could say the CIO role has reverted to IT Director but I think that role is also opening up these days with possibilities like PaaS and SaaS. In my view, the CIO today has plenty to be getting on with.”
I was previously CIO and we changed the title to reflect a new focus after the completion of a major SAP and ICT transformation project two years ago. The need for leadership then was to completely renew our systems, which were largely outdated legacy and bespoke systems. Today the need is for leadership and innovation in data and digital and new 21st century opportunities, Michael Downes, Uniphar
The separation of focus, Ó Midheach believes, is actually very useful to all of the senior ICT people. “I wouldn’t get too hung up on roles and titles, in fact, because I think responsibilities could easily shift or be shared between them according to the organisational needs of the moment. But in general, the CIO has a prime focus on what can be done in the IT space while the CDO would be customer and market-led and in the banking world that is extremely data-driven.”
“Certain types of organisation may or may not require the level of focus we are talking about and the Chief Digital Officer is not necessarily confined to commercial enterprises — it’s more about the value and innovation in whatever services are being delivered. It could be citizens or patients and not customers, for example. Essentially, you are looking for a new and different approach from the traditional ICT one. But at the same time it is certainly not beyond a typical CIO, just that it is harder to reach across when you have a certain career ‘upbringing’.
In smaller organisations, Ó Midheach acknowledges, the CIO has fingers in many pies anyway — indeed anything remotely digital — and is less functionally bound. “That vital capacity for crossover as probably been developing throughout their career and they may well have broader horizons. In larger organisations — and it is something we are trying very hard to change — people are typically more bound to their allotted functions in their careers.”
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