CIO role morphing beyond IT

Chief information officers (CIOs) must be prepared to see their jobs increasingly move beyond the narrow IT focus that has traditionally defined their roles, industry watchers have warned.

A Meta Group study, Driving the Business Value with IT, found that only 58 per cent of the CIOs it interviewed believe their scope of responsibility is "traditional CIO".

More than one in five CIOs indicated that their job included responsibilities beyond IT, including facilities to human resources, while 29 per cent specifically indicated they also had responsibility for leading or supporting business transformation.

"Given the IT organisation's end-to-end view of business processes it is no surprise that CIOs are gaining responsibility for supporting business transformation," said CD Hobbs, senior vice president with Meta Group's executive directions, in a statement.

"The CIO has unique knowledge and insight valuable for business process management, re-engineering and/or reconfiguration - all with the potential to alter culture in a positive manner while responding to market imperatives."

Hobbs said business executives, including chief executives, are recognising and coming to expect the beneficial changes that IT can deliver to a company.

"CIOs must master and be prepared to deliver the transformational capability of the IT organisation [ITO] across the enterprise to sustain the improved credibility of the ITO gained in the first few years of this century," he said.