With rapid technological changes, CIO’s role goes beyond IT

Academic says CIO defines strategic direction of an organisation.

KARACHI:

The technological evolution and rapidly changing landscape of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry has changed the very role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) whose job is not limited to managing the IT department anymore.

This was the message of the first-ever Pakistan CIO Summit and Expo, which kicked off at the DHA Golf & Country Club on Tuesday.

“The world around us is changing dramatically and so is the role of CIOs,” Irfan Hyder, Dean of College of Business Management told a gathering of IT professionals, academia as well as decision-makers.

Hyder’s presentation titled “Next Generation CIO as Transformative Change Agent and Innovators – Thriving with the Pace of Change” was focused on the changing role of CIO.

The chief information officer is a senior officer commonly responsible for managing IT infrastructure and computer systems to support his company’s goals. He reports to the top management such as the chief executive officer, chief financial officer and chief operations officer.



By contrast, the presentations in the inaugural session of the CIO Summit 2013 highlighted the role of CIO that is beyond managing the IT.

“The expectations from CIO are not limited to managing the IT infrastructure and IT staff, in fact, he is expected to demonstrate the leadership,” Hyder said.

Giving examples of Nokia and Blackberry, he said, these companies came and thrived but they did not respond to the change in time and are now fighting for their survival.

The role of CIO, Hyder said, defines strategic direction of an organisation. The term CIO has multiple meanings now, he said, it could be chief innovation officer or chief intelligent officer etc.

Hyder’s presentation perfectly set the pitch for Adnan Siddiqui, Country General Manager at IBM, who expanded the discussion on CIO’s role in his presentation “Building a Smart Planet”.

CIOs can utilise IT to improve business in order to make sure that IT is no longer a cost but an enabler of the vision of the CEO, Siddiqui said.

“Our society is integrated, instrumented and interconnected but has humongous wastage as well,” he said. “Utilise your budget to save this waste.”

FMCGs, for example, lost $40 billion annually due to an insufficient supply chain, he said, while sharing an example.

CIOs, Siddiqui said, have to clearly show the RoI (return on investment) of everything they do to their senior management. An insurance company in the United States got a 400% RoI by using big data analytics in the area of fraud detection, he pointed out.

While IT professionals shed light on the importance of CIO in leading organisations and the opportunities they can avail, the guest speakers talked about how lack of policy-making halted ICT growth.

“There has been a lot of effort on the part of the government, industry and academia but we are still stuck and Pakistan is still struggling in the sector,” said Dr Ishrat Husain, Director of IBA and former governor of State Bank of Pakistan.

“Our mindset is the greatest obstacle in the absorption and adoption of new ideas and solutions. Inquisitiveness, challenging the status quo and knowing why things happen are some key habits that we should adopt,” Husain said.

The event’s chief guest Dr Attaur Rahman, former federal minister of science and technology and former chairman of Higher Education Commission, talked about how the world has evolved technologically and scientifically and become a place where truth is stranger than fiction.

He suggested that in order for Pakistan to improve its current condition in the sector it should have a lot more work in the area of R&D and understand that innovation is the name of the game.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2013.

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