CIOs may not be enough for govt organisations

The digital government and open government revolutions are putting pressure on government CIOs, and public sector organisations will increasingly find that the role is no longer enough, according to Gartner.

The research firm predicts that by next year, more than 10% of government organisations will have created the role of chief data officer, and more than 20% will have appointed a chief digital officer.

Gartner Managing Vice President Andrea DiMaio said government organisations are likely to create these and similar roles “in response to the increasing importance of enterprise digital assets”.

In the short term at least, he expects the newly created roles to coexist with more traditional ones such as the CIO and CTO. This will necessitate close collaboration.

“Government CIOs must establish good working relationships with chief data officers, chief digital officers or equivalent roles introduced to support the digital strategy and identify areas where they can add value to a different role’s responsibility,” DiMaio said.

But in the longer term, Gartner expects a rebalancing of responsibilities among the C-level positions in response to overlapping roles and an expected loss of enthusiasm for digital and open government strategies.

At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Australia this week, Gartner Research Director Rick Howard predicted that the chief data officer would be the most vulnerable role in this scenario.

“The application of open data principles to data other than public data will give CIOs the ability to regain a key role on driving the data architecture well beyond the externally facing remit of a chief data officer. As a result, the chief data officer role is very likely to be subsumed by the CIO or the chief digital officer,” he said.

Image courtesy of Brenden Ashton under CC