Changing Role of the Corporate Information Systems Officer

1
Changing Role of the Corporate Information
Systems Officer

• Robert Benjamin, Charles Dickenson, John Rockart
• MIS Quarterly Sept 1985

2
Agenda

• Summary
• Key Points
• Comparison with Prior Article
• Relevance for Today

3
Summary

• The role of the IS Exec is changing to be
• More distributed
• More staff oriented
• Questionnaire sent to 25 CIOs, 20 responded
  because of their relationship with MIT and
  Sloans Center for Information Systems Research
  (CISR)

4
Summary

• Predictions
• Traditional role of IS has three areas of
  responsibility
• Analysis, Programming and Operations
• Currently in a period of technological
  discontinuity as suggested by Nolan in his
  stages theory
• See chart on next page

5
Nolans Most Recent Stages ChartThe Autonomous
Computing Era
Network Era
Autonomous Computing Era
Organizational Learning

• 60 computer-to-computer
• Closed-loop speed benefits
• Global arena

Micro Era
DP Era
2010
1960
1980
1995
1975
2003
Source Presentation at SIMposium October 27,
2003
6
Summary

• Current perspectives
• Shift to user-dominated technologies
• Senior Management is looking to IS for leadership
  in the transition
• Shift from narrow DP planning to enterprise wide
  architecture
• Movement toward greater distribution and
  complexity in technology
• User demand is increasing
• New development methodologies
• Communications are more complex
• Conclusion
• IT is becoming more of a factor in business
  strategy

7
New CIO Role

• Decentralization of line responsibilities to
  divisions and departments
• Staff orientation new emphasis on staff versus
  line responsibilities
• Strategy and planning versus operations
• Corporate responsibility for Information Resource
  Policy and Strategy

8
Research Findings

• Decentralization of line responsibility from
  central IS to distributed and user areas
• IS Budget Corporate controlled budget is only
  48 of entire IS budget
• Increasing Staff Orientation planning, strategy
• Corporate responsibility for Policy and Strategy
• CIO starting to report to CEO and non-Finance
  areas of the company
• Three most important initiatives Telecom, End
  User Computing and Corporate Straregy

9
Comparison with Prior Article

• Same general conclusions
• Rockart key researcher in both
• Each used surveys of CIOs
• Identifying a transitional period

10
Relevance for Today?

• CIO role is still changing
• We are now in the Autonomous Computing Era
• Business focus changes, and IT focus has to
  change as well
• Interesting focus on distributed computing and
  staff orientation
• Do we realize we are in a transition period?