The Chief Information Officer is typically seen as the incumbent Process Owner for Information Management who is involved in developing an organisations Information Strategy. In a journal article, 'Is your CIO adding value?' (Earl & Feeny 1995) it concluded that after several years of research on IT leadership, two distinct patterns were observed. The first indicates that Chief Executive Officers (CEO's) appear to be caught up in the belief that IT is a strategic resource while others see it as a cost centre. The second observation is that the CIO's role and actions are crucial in ensuring that Information Technology (IT) is deployed for strategic advantage, and that the Information Systems (IS) function delivers value. The CIO can and must add value, or IS will be seen as a problem, instead of being recognized as a strength.
In essence CIO's success is measured by their ability to add value to the organisation as well as its confidence in the information systems provided. The CIO through a holistic through-life approach for ICT management oversees the implementation as well as the systems meaningful contribution. However the Executive committee and company Boards are sick and tired of hearing the rhetoric that "information technology can create competitive advantage and enable business transformation." What is often remembered are the failed IT projects; the so called hype associated with it and not to mention the astronomical implementation and processing costs. In the conundrum of managing spiralling costs, Chief Officers often turn to known fixes such as outsourcing or downsizing, yet companies fail to realise that it often the underperforming of these very officers that is compounding the situation. Today it is not uncommon to hear of CIO's being fired or their contracts not renewed. Unfortunately that stigma remains with the individual for years to come.
Timeliness or Relevance
Responding to the growing dependency on Information Technology, the UK Government developed a set of recommendations for IT management in the 1980s. It recognised that without standard practices, public and private entities were independently creating so called IT management practices. The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) was initially a collection of books dedicated to the practice of IT Service Management and was a process-model based view for controlling and managing operations. W. Edwards Deming has been credited for the underpinning philosophy for effective IT Service improvement (Clifford & van Bon 2008).
A number of significant changes in the way ICT management is enabled have resulted in several revisions of an organisations strategy in recent years. However, a revised and re-energised IT framework from the CIO's office is required to meet organisational challenges with a more rigorous approach to the way it conducts business internally as well as with other organisations externally using ICT. Such a frame work will require new ways of working for both private and public sector organisations involved in the delivery of ICT products and services. There has been a significant increase in the threat to holistic ICT management and while this may be difficult to comprehend, the rise of the internet and the ability to attack and disrupt from a distance, has added to the burden of the CIO's, the ability in mitigate such informational threats. The consequences of these threats have resulted in an increase of internet crime, identity theft, fraud and theft, as well as other malicious activity aimed at disrupting the balance or fragility of information systems. The tried and tested management frameworks of yesterday are no longer capable of equipping the CIO of today. The underpinnings of Deming and the Learning Organisation culture or that of Dr Ackoff on Creative Problem Solving or Total Systems Intervention by Professor Michael C. Jackson does not fare well in the age of cyber crime (Flood & Jackson 1991).
If the vision is to have meaningful and reliable information systems that can support the individual as well as the business with confidence, then more up-to-date management models and frameworks are required by CIO's that are in line with industry and framed against best practices. These must serve as a cornerstone in building character as well as the business, as responsible corporate citizens freely transacting and sharing information, without dire consequences. At the same time as pursuing this considerable agenda, government must also continue to ensure that enduring strategic priorities are met. The national security and economic and social well-being of the country through the use of holistic information systems remain paramount. CIO's play an even more critical role of ensuring that organisations have appropriate measures in place to protect themselves against information exploits and to provide the capability to remain resilient in the face of hostile action. Decisive leadership together with expert knowledge is called for to enhance the ICT management framework and to take this forward in a coordinated and coherent manner. A key part of this will be for the CIO's advice and guidance across industry sectors.
Clearly, the CIO is by no means a passive player that is at the mercy of others internally or externally to the organisation. The evolved role of the CIO influences their own well being in the organization, while creating meaningful interactions among the other entities found in the model or "quagmire". In an electronic journal entitled, The Evolving Role of the CIO (Jeanne & Feeny 2003), it is argued that CIO's influence their roles by addressing the forces through relationship building and education. Further that they influence the attitudes of key executives toward IT by successfully managing and extending the applications portfolio, they directly influence the strategic impact of IT in their organizations.
Current Models used by South African organisations
King III recognises that information communication technology (ICT) has become an essential part of business today, as it is primary to the support, sustainability and growth of every organisation. ICT help organisation to cut down the cost and across all aspects, processes and components. Therefore, it is not only an operational enabler for a organisation, but also an important strategic plan that can be leveraged to create successes and to gain competitive advantage.
According to Engineering News (2009), King III became necessary because of the anticipated new Companies Act and changing trends in international governance.
As well as being a strategic asset to the company, ICT also presents organisations with significant risks. The strategic asset of ICT and its related risks and constraints should be well governed and controlled to ensure that ICT supports the strategic objectives of the organisation. King III stipulates that in exercising their duty of care, directors should ensure that prudent and reasonable steps have been taken with respect to ICT governance (King's Counsel, 2010).
The King Committee tried to be at the forefront of governance and they have achieved by focusing on the importance of annual reports on how a company has affected the economic life of the organisation community in both positive and negative side. Moreover, the emphasis has been placed on the requirement to report on how the company intends to improve their positive aspects and eliminate any possible impacts of negative side on the economic life of the organisation in which it will operate.
In order to present the link between law and governance principles, the King Report observes: "The ultimate compliance officer is the company's stakeholders who will let the board know by their continued support of the company if they accept the departure from a recommended practice and the reasons furnished for doing so."
King III is newest version of the King Report on Governance for South Africa; the spotlight has become firmly fixed on ICT governance, which is a condition for organisations to meet the requirements of King III.
Whether an organisation provides IT services as its core business or ICT forms part of internal services, IT service management acts as an enabler for King III, which requires the ICT department to transform into a service management department.
One thing that many organisations decide to use King III, ICT governance is corporate governance. IT department has been separated from the overall business for a long time, supplying technology to keep up with demand, but failing to address real business problems due to a lack of understanding of business needs.
On the other hand, the impact of King III on the non-profit sector is valuable. King III has an impact on this sector in that many auditors have expected non-profit organisations to comply with the 75 principles or explain why they cannot comply. However, there are also many of the principles in King III are not suitable for this sector.
Whilst the King Commission may be reconsidering its position on the non-profit sector, it has not consulted with the sector in any meaningful way. Nor does it represent the sector. The non-profit organisations need to take ownership of any response to King III.
King III is not legislation. King III proposes that organisations should apply these practices or explain why they should not apply it, makes the picture that it has the same authority as legislation. Given this assertion that King III documents apply to all entities, some organisation may think it as the standard of governance for civil society community in South Africa.
King III is heavily skewed, in language and meaning, towards the commercial sector. This is highlighted by the fact that the report says to business and commercial organisations that trading activities are the sole means of sustaining all entities. King III is seemingly unmindful of the fact that a large number of civil society organisations in South Africa do not generate their own income through trading activities. It can only be deduced that this assumption is a consequence of a neglected consideration of the non-profit sector (Peter & Ricardo, 2010).
Prognosis for System Failures
Current IT solutions are based on underline models that map IT to business. Most solution are design using a structured approach as result the underlining models are strictly structured and can not be adjust (Abusafiya & Mazumdar, 2008). Some of the models selected deliver value to business while others dismal failed. Failures of these models are always place on the head of the CIO or IT leaders. There are various underlying models used on IT such as Master Systems Planning, Business Process Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Outsourcing, Project Management, Corporate Governance, Open Sourcing, Architecture Building, to name the few and other factors include Organization Politics.
Master Systems Planning
Before Enterprise Architecture was introduced the most talked about planning model was Master Systems Plan. One of the most reasons why Master System Plans are fazing out is the lack of business involvement in a strategic point of view. Master Systems Plan did not assist IT to work smarter by consideration factors like standardization in order to reduce cost which is always a business focus. Master Systems Planning was more focusing on IT operations rather than IT strategy as a result IT did not give business any competitive advantage (Gottschalk & Taylor, 2000).
Business Process Management (BPM)
BPM is not about IT but focuses on aligning all business functions to the business objectives as result implementation of BPM must not be a one time project but an ongoing process. BPM must be aligned to the company strategy hence a vision and a strategy must be defined before embarking on a BPM project. Some of the failures of BPM involved changing of business process while users not ready. The main challenge of BPM is that it involved organisation wide transformation. The transformation means business has to abandon some processes while re-engineering new processes. The re-engineering initiatives must be part of both IT strategy and business strategy in order to eliminate failures (Eardley, Shah H & Radman, 2008).
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Various studies have been conducted on implementation of ERP's and their failures. Failures include lack of top management support, clear goals and objectives, inadequate user involvement and training, poor business process analysis and engineering, poor technology selection and data conversion, lacks of controls (Ojala, Vilpola & Kouri, 2006). ERP implementation strongly relied on IT strategy that is aligned to a business strategy. Most organization that successfully implemented ERP systems have a long term view because ERP tangible benefits can not be achieved in a short term (Lin, 2010). Top management support is need because it influence the perceptions around ERP while encouraging users to adopt them
Outsourcing
During the past years in South Africa one of the most challenges faced by organization was IT skills shortage. Most organization end up curbing the problem by outsourcing IT. There are numerous benefits of outsourcing IT; the most common mentioned it assist business to focus on core business. In order to reduce cost; Balt (2011) advises companies to focus building partnership to address skill challenges, complexity and specialization of IT. However the major problem is that some organization end up outsourcing critical services like IT which result on the organization loosing important knowledge sets and capabilities (Mcivor, 2011). The major problem is that most of this organizations lack of frameworks to follow when embarking on outsourcing. The framework will assist organization coming up with competitive strategy to ensure that critical services like IT are not outsourced. Outsourcing must only be performed when the outsourced company have relative capabilities, create a competitive advantage, and potential business opportunities (Mcivor, 2011).
Project Management
The continuous failures of IT projects have also plays significant roles in the manner in which business view IT; business are often not easy to embark on IT projects. One of the major contributions of IT project failures is the lack of project management or poor project management governances. Some companies have no linkage between business strategy, IT strategy and IT project. Companies need to develop Project Management Frameworks to ensure a full IT value realizing process of IT projects (Peppard, 2010). Project initiatives must be part or influenced by the business strategy rather than IT operation plans. Project stakeholders like project sponsors must always come from business, specifically senior management and ensured that they are part of the initiatives and implementation.
Corporate Governance
Failure of IT projects or initiatives place a heavily burden to board of directors as result most companies started to look at IT Governance as part of Corporate Governance. In South Africa, the latest King III report recommends the appointment of an IT representative on board level. There are many IT governance frameworks that have been developed but most are aimed to ensure business realize the value of IT and mitigates the risks associate with it as a result most IT governances are divided into two categories namely IT Value Governance and IT Risk Governance (Parent & Reich, 2009). Implementing such governances would not guarantee a successful IT. There are number of factors that prevents organization for fully realizing the benefits of IT Governances that must be dealt with; some factors include board of directors not understanding IT or the risk that IT have on business. IT governance will need committees or accountability structures to delegate responsibilities without those committees communication will be poor (Butler & Butler, 2010).
Open Sourcing
Due to the IT cost and monopoly of some IT suppliers; many organization started to look at need to move towards to open source. Although most companies have recognized the benefits of moving towards open source but there are number of technical challenges that prevent them not to do so; those challenges include security issues, availability of support, skills shortage, legal complications, lack of proper documentations, vendor reliability, and support cost. Failures of open sourcing are attributed to organizations not having proper business models in place which will yield returns from technology innovations (West, 2007). The benefits of open sourcing must be first highlighted from the business point of view before embarking on such project as a result open sourcing must be part of business strategy supported by an IT strategy. An open source project must have proper structures such as committees and governances in order to be successful.
Architecture building
Different organisations followed different models to design their architectures and most of those models have similar patterns or desired outcomes while differ on notations used. One of the most common architectures used is Enterprise Architecture. The most negative hype around IT architecture is that they are time consuming with high investment cost and no feasible return on investment for business. John Zachman the founder of the Zachman framework once alluded to the fact that IT takes architecture building as an IT solution whereas is a strictly business solution as a result it must be based in a business strategy (CIO Forum, 2011). Architecture building must not be about documentation but a process, this will assist business to keep on changing as technology changes often (DOC Enterprise IT Architecture Advisory Group, 2004).
Organizational Politics
Organization politics play a significant role on the nature of a CIO which results to system failures. Peppard (2010) argued that the environment that CIO operates contributes a lot to the success and failure of IT initiatives. Organization politics include the organization recognizing the value of IT; most organizations who value their IT less have an ineffective IT. Power structures also play a significant roll on the successfulness and failures of IT; for an organization to be successful, CIO must have the relevant powers to influence the organization (Chen, Preston, Xia, 2010).
Some organizations CIO direct report to the accountability officer known as CEO or some to the CFO and while others may prefer a CIO to report to the COO. Such structures determine the powers that a CIO may have within the organisation to influence the organization direction or decisions. Other organizational factors include support that IT leaders have from business. Most successful IT has a full support from their business. IT supports ensure that the CIO has enough relevant resources to execute IT projects; a vision only will not to help. The influencing powers of a CIO must not only limited to senior management but extend to peers; this will assist organization to realise the benefits of strategic information systems projects (Enns, Huff & Higgins, 2003). Other factors like trust and the will for a CIO to make their superiors always happy also plays a major role on ensuring top management are involved on IT initiatives (Miura, 2003).
Considerations for Future Management Models
5.1 Strategy
No ICT Management Strategy and Plan should be created until the Business Visions, Goals and Objectives of the Organization has been determined, finalised and agreed to by the Senior Management. A clearly mapping between the Business goals and the vision must be completed so that business strategies can be formulated to determine how these goals and objectives will be achieved.
The Senior Management of the organization must create a priority list to determine which goals and objectives are important and the sequence in which they must be executed so that maximum value and benefit for the organization can be derived. Once all the business goals are clearly defined, the business processes that will enable each of the goals must be created and defined. The roles, responsibilities, procedures, resources and tools required to execute each of these processes must be identified and clearly documented in the form of business architecture models.
Once all the business processes are known and have been discovered, only then must the IT strategy and plan be formulated to determine which of these processes can be mechanised and automated through the use of Information Technology and Systems. Based on the priorities and sequence set by the business, IT resources must be deployed and assigned to help achieve automation of the business processes. Business processes that are repeated across a number of goals become core processes and these will be linked to IT Systems that make up the shared IT Platforms.
By using the above strategy, IT has places the responsibility of prioritizing of the business goals and objectives with the business owners and IT can focus on ensuring that the relevant IT resources are made available to achieve the set business goals and objectives. This method ensures that the ICT Management and its resources are always in sync with the Business Goals and Objectives.
From a holist ICT Management perspective, the IT division must move towards an Architecture oriented approach when designing solutions to meet the Business Objectives and goals. This approach will ensure that it delivers reusable buildings blocks that are used to implement a business process instead of building standalone and solution specific components. By using the building blocks approach, this will enable the ICT Division to become more agile by providing solutions that are linked to the business goals and vision via the automated and mechanised processes through IT Systems. If the business goals and vision changes, then the business architecture also changes and the processes linked to these goals must be updated accordingly. Using this methodology, the IT Division can then petition for additional resources to support the changes in business direction. IT must refrain from adding functionality to systems that were never architected to perform those functions in the first instance. If there is a change in the business architecture, IT must evaluate its current capabilities and if the current IT Toolbox does not contain the required functionality, then these buildings blocks must be acquired in order to meet the business requirements.
5.2 The Assessment of the "As Is" and "To Be" States
Before determining any future strategy for the ICT Management Systems of the organization the current system capabilities and functionalities must be known or determined. An architecture model that links the current business processes to the already implemented systems that enable these processes must be created.
Before"To Be" System Implementation architecture is created, the new vision and objectives of the business must first be decomposed into the relevant business architecture. The new business architecture will give rise to a group of new business processes. A gap analysis must then be completed to determine what needs to be done in order to support the new business processes of the organization in terms of providing additional ICT Systems and Management.
There are several tools and frameworks that are available to perform these analysis and mappings. The Zachman Framework and TOGAF model provide useful templates and guidance on how to perform current state and gap analysis with the business objectives in mind.
The key to using any of these frameworks is to choose an architecture methodology and reference framework that can be tailored to the dynamics and environment of the organization.
The Strategic and Operational Plans
Strategic and Operational ICT Plans should not be done in isolation. These plans should be part of the integrated Business Plan. Only once the business has prioritised its goals and objectives, should the IT plans be formulated.
The Strategic IT Plans must be aligned with the future goals and objectives of the organization, whilst the operational plans support the current state and daily operations of the business.
The implementation of the strategic IT Plans will ready the ICT environment to support the future state of the organization, however this is not a once initiative because once the Strategic "To Be" systems are implement, they become the "As Is" and this entire process must be ongoing to support an ever changing and evolving Business environment.
Conclusion
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