Analysis: Should tech leaders be CIOs or CTOs?

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A body representing UK public sector IT professionals last month said the role of chief information officer (CIO) was one that would be critical to future successes.

On the face of it, the ascendancy of the CIO could arguably be good news for all those public or private sector IT professionals with career aspirations at a senior management level.

But the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) also warned that, as a result, technologists face a stark choice. “Stick to the familiar role – one that is being progressively de-skilled – or make the leap into a bigger and more challenging one,” it said in its ‘What in a name?’ report.

Eamonn Kennedy, IT services practice leader at analyst Ovum, told IT PRO he broadly agreed with the assertion of the Socitm report, as he said information, and not technology, had become the more important strategically important business asset.

Information vs technology

Indeed, that's why the word ‘information’ is in the title of CIO, the report said. “Information appears in the CIO’s title for a good reason: it is the good management and use of information that enables the change from industrial age organisational methods and practice,” it said.

Kennedy added: “If the CTO role is essentially marshalling how existing technologies are used in an organisation and evaluating new ones for adoption then, in some ways, it is one of a professional geek.”

If the IT leader’s role is defined by managing technology that’s just in date, then the CTO title would be most suitable. He continued: “If an organisation is defined by the information it should control and have access to, then yes, the CIO role is strategically more important.”

But, at the same time, the report pointed out: “Information management remains a poorly developed discipline within most organisations, but without it organisational ambition will be severely constrained.”

There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about the changing role of the CIO and how the IT organisation can learn to communicate more clearly with business, using a more common language.

Asking the right questions

Kennedy said that only now was the IT industry asking the right questions of itself to start finding answers to problem of bridging the gap between IT and business, or perhaps more fittingly, between their technology and information assets.

It may be that the CTO/CIO debate is a moot one then, especially when considered in relief of the fact that organisations, by definition, will always need IT leaders as long as technology continues to automate key business processes.

According to a recent survey, the IT Job Board interviewed 498 IT workers on the theme of permanent versus contract recruitment, and 94 per cent of them believed that IT director and CIO roles were most likely to be permanent.

So perhaps the role of CIO may be in the ascendancy across public and private sectors now, at the expense of the level of strategic importance of the CTO. But Ovum’s Kennedy stressed it was important to take a longer-term view.

The Socitm report asked: “Are you content to look after the technology, acknowledging that this role may be de-skilled and devalued over time?” Kennedy advised IT professionals to refine their skills as consumers, rather than, agents of the technology their organisations rely on.

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