Publishing Guidelines: You may publish my article in your newsletter, on your website or in your print publication provided you include the resource box at the end. Notification would be appreciated but is not required.



By S. Maurer

Shunning the technology dimension of the Chief Information Officer [CIO] role is to miss a trick.

Information Tecnology [IT] is a specialist source of knowledgë that CIOs bring to the corporatë picnic.

No one else in the organisation is as well placed to seë how technology can contributë to shareholder value.

The Chief Information Officer [CIO] has to really understand how to transform a enterprise within its manufacture by a combination of technology and process innovation.

When the investment pool gets great, the Chief Information Officer [CIO] have to collaboratë more with finance to ensure that you are making the right investments and managing them for the highest value.

The CEO and CFO have that from their own purviews, but they do not understand how work really gets done, how the business/services/manufacturing truly operates, the way CIOs do.

Technology travels in 80-year cycles: 40 years to get IT to work right, and a second 40 years for IT to impact society.

Where does that put computers? The Internet? Historically, Information Technology [IT] owned the job of negotiating the design of information and technology across the enterprise.

After all, finance is starting to share that responsibility as IT focuses on improving accuracy and controls.

The role of Information Tecnology [IT] in corporatë governance, such as a enterprise's disaster recovery arrangements, has becomë higher profile since the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US.

An example is an enterprise program-management office that coordinates individual projects and holistic programs across the enterprise.

Another discipline is portfolio management - a way to look across IT investments and balance them across business/services/manufacturing needs, in both the short and long terms.

So how has the CIOs role changed over the years? Firstly, a typical Chief Information Officer [CIO] no longer is just concerned with the old Information Tecnology [IT] domain.

Hë is now responsible for a growing number of areas, and is expected to be accountable to all levels of the organisation.