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Eight roles the CIO must play
And three to avoid like the plague...

By Steve Ranger

Published: Tuesday 28 August 2007

If you thought CIO stood just for 'chief information officer' you might be in for a bit of a shock. It seems there are eight other roles - all of which conveniently also have the initials CIO - that the "multi-dimensional" tech chief also has to play.

The CIO has to be chief integration officer as well - someone who has to deal with the complexity created by generations of implementation decisions that have created a horde of legacy systems silos which has created an integration nightmare in most enterprises, according to a whitepaper by outsourcing giant EDS.

CIO also stands - perhaps unsurprisingly - for chief innovation officer, chief investigative officer and also for chief irritation officer, because of their role in challenging the status quo.

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EDS also suggests you can throw in chief identity officer because of the importance of identity management, and chief inoculation officer because of the critical role in maintaining IT security.

As chief international officer CIOs will be required to manage the business and technical infrastructures necessary for the global enterprise. The research paper said: "Managing an international infrastructure requires the CIO to be part lawyer, part technician, part politician and all businessperson."

What kind of CIO are you?

♦ Paratrooper
♦ Consultant
♦ Executive
♦ Professional

Check out the full CIO profile report here and silicon.com's own 2007 CIO Agenda survey.

And if that wasn't enough, CIOs also have to be chief information officer - but here the focus is on information, not IT, with the CIO central to this shift from information for processing to information for decision-making.

EDS also identifies three roles the CIO needs to avoid: chief inertia officer, chief impediment officer and chief inefficiency officer. EDS said IT must be "a business enabler, not a business impediment", warning that SOA efforts are being resisted by traditional IT staff and is misunderstood by business staff.