1. Chapter 2
The Changing Role of
the CIO
In the last post the CIOs’ top ten
business priorities were identified and
it was argued that these do not fit into
the traditional remit of the CIO. Many
are seeing these new responsibilities
falling into a number of distinct roles,
with individual CIOs combining
different roles to create their own
unique portfolio of responsibilities. The
roles are:
Chief Digital Officer
The chief digital officer is responsible
for digital delivery of services,
communications, marketing, and
processes. One in five CIOs already
acts in this capacity, according to
Gartner, leading digital commerce
and channels and being responsible
for evolving the business to embrace
digital transformation , while 5-6% of
companies actually have someone
with this title. For example, Fox
News, Guardian News & Media, and
MGM Resorts are just a handful of
companies who have a separate chief
digital officer position, in addition to
the CIO.
Chief Outsourcing Officer
The chief outsourcing officer is
responsible for outsourcing as
many noncore services as possible
while ensuring value, reliability, and
security. The new wave of technology
has commoditised parts of IT that
were previously thought of as core
competencies. As such, a much larger
range of business applications can
now be outsourced to save money.
For the COO, a key role is deciding
what can be outsourced and what
must be kept in-house. There is a need
to focus on activities that add value or
differentiate, divesting themselves of
anything that does not.
The COO must also orchestrate
a mosaic of suppliers and ensure
consistent levels of reliability, security,
and performance. The portfolio of
suppliers may or may not include
in-house teams and IT assets such as
data centres.
Chief Cloud Broker
The chief cloud broker is responsible
for finding the right cloud providers,
applications, and technology partners
and integrating them. The chief
cloud broker needs to be adept at
evaluating, adopting, and orchestrating
a collection of cloud application,
services, and providers, whether they
are in a private, public, or hybrid cloud.
They also need to ensure that data in
the cloud is secure and well managed,
moving from multiple management
tools to a single, integrated system
that can manage their entire
environment.
Brokering cloud services provides
business IT problems with another
solution, a solution that changes the
focus from technology to service
relationships and being able to
manage this is a new essential area
of expertise.

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Chief Insight Officer
The chief insight officer is responsible
for data collection, storage,
processing and analysis; helping to
turn raw information into insights
that can improves business decision
making. By effectively leveraging
data for analysis, the IT department
can become an organisation’s
intelligence agency enabling the rest
of the organisation to make smarter
decisions.
The vast majority of executives would
welcome this. They feel that they
could make better decisions if they
had tools to turn existing data into
usable insights. The use of big data
will become a key basis of competitive
advantage and growth for a number of
individual companies.
Chief Innovation Officer
The chief innovation officer is perhaps
the biggest opportunity presented
by the latest developments to IT.
The chief innovation officer would
be responsible for leading the way
to new business opportunities and
new ways of doing business through
technology. Essentially, they would
be more business engineers than IT
engineers. Learning to harness the
power of disruptive technology is the
answer to the “innovator’s dilemma,”
which threatens successful incumbent
businesses.
These five roles have been made
necessary due to the latest IT
developments detailed. While some
organisations have begun to embrace
these, either incorporated into the
CIO’s remit or as an entirely new
position within the C-Suite, others
are yet to take action. It is arguable
that by ignoring new technological
opportunities businesses will not be
able to remain competitive, or even get
off the ground in the first place.
1. http://www.economist.com/news/business/21591201-information-
technology-everywhere-companies-it-departments-mixed
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