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Assessing the various interpretations of the role and responsibilities of the chief information officer

When Philip Clarke took over as the chief executive of retail titan Tesco in March 2011, his promotion helped put an end to one of the longest-running boardroom gags: that CIO stands for ‘career is over’.

If the former CIO at one of the UK’s most successful companies can go on to reach the top spot, it shows that the role can give the holder experience that makes them eligible for overall business leadership.

According to Barbara Dossetter, programme director at professional group CIO Connect, the job of IT leader gives an unparalleled viewpoint of the overall operations of the organisation, and as such it is increasingly seen as an essential stop-off for ambitious young executives. “It’s becoming one of the must-have positions for would-be chief executives,” she says.

But while it is true that there are some organisations where the CIO is invited to contribute to corporate strategy, there are others where it is still a chiefly functionary role, says Kate Hanaghan of K2 Advisory.

“How the CIO is perceived typically comes down to whether IT is regarded as being strategic,” she says. Some management boards still perceive IT to be little more than a cost base, but where boards understand the value that IT can bring to their business, there is far more scope for the IT chief to branch out.

As this suggests, it is misleading to talk about the CIO position as though it is a single, defined role that is consistent across organisations.

In fact, there are many roles that a CIO may be expected to serve, depending on the culture and circumstances of their employer. Budding executives may find that they have to serve one or more of these at any time. Discussed below are some of the most common interpretations of the CIO role.

The back office custodian

Historically, the dominant interpretation of the CIO role, and the ultimate apogee of the technologists’ career, has been as a glorified systems administrator. The senior IT decision-maker’s job was to keep the IT infrastructure running, and little more.

In organisations where this is still the dominant view, there will be little opportunity for the CIO to get involved in strategic leadership. However, there are still opportunities to use the role to prove one’s leadership skills.

“If the CIO can demonstrate that the role they play is cutting costs, they can enhance their credibility,” says Hanaghan.

By the same token, even in more enlightened organisations, it is not a role that can be neglected. “Without a strong track record, CIOs aren’t going to be invited to take on more strategic projects.”

Innovator in chief

The polar opposite of the back office custodian, and a highly sought-after CIO role, is that of the ‘chief innovation officer’.

The need for executive-level focus on new technologies and business practices is well recognised, at least among CIOs themselves. A recent survey by recruitment consultant Harvey Nash found that almost three-quarters of global CIOs believe that without embracing innovative new technology, their companies would lose market share.

Steve Chambers, CIO for Visa Europe, is perhaps the model IT innovator, having earned his spurs with eye-catching projects such as the introduction of a pan-European payment platform. That platform processes around ten billion transactions each year and has achieved 100% uptime since 2008 – the kind of success story that cements an IT chief’s reputation.

That success has allowed Visa’s IT department to take a leading role in the organisation’s go-to-market strategy, supporting new products such as its payWave wireless payment card and the smartphone payment system that it is currently developing.

It is perhaps not all that surprising to see innovation forming such a central tenet of Chambers’s brief: the payment-processing market is a data-heavy industry, so it is only natural that the companies operating in the market depend on IT. Similarly, the CIO is more likely to be expected to innovate in industries with more intense competition.

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