The CIO'S In Public Service Sector And Private Service Sector - Assignment Example

?The CIO'S in public service sector and private service sector Number: Lecturer: Introduction The Chief information Officer’s role in the public service sector has become more dominant since they have relied on the government for information and technology management, service delivery to the public as well as meeting the demands of the technological world. The role of the CIO in regards to public sector is at formative level but well developed in the private sector. It is through this fact, that challenges and opportunities ought to be identified in the public service sector. Despite the fact that government is viewed as the entire enterprise, some other departments in a government operate with their own mission, goals and visions with the CIO being a position. The CIO being an official government role, it has been present in most government enterprises for the last have a centaury. The organizations during this period were undergoing revolutions as far as Information technology is concern. More resources are being invested in the IT with the top executive officers being well aware of their business competitors by use of the information technology to have the upper hand in globally growing market place. On the other hand, the private sector being aware of the importance has experienced the gains of an officer who manages the information technology and the assets of the organization for the last two decades. During the time the private sector were experiencing the gains of the implementation of the CIO in their structures, the public sector was still recognizing the new position of the executive. The interesting thing to note is that when the organizations in the private sector implemented the CIO’s as early as early 80’s, the government appointed the CIO as late as 2003. This therefore translate that public sector is two decades behind the counterparts in the private sector in the appointment of an executive in charge of the information (Portela, Carvalho, Varajao & Magalhaes, 2010). The recognition of the significance of the appointment of CIO is affected by the high rates of labor turnover in both public and private sectors. Particularly in the public sector, instability acquired as a result of high rate of turnover lead to the assumption that the crucial role at the infancy development stage has never been implemented sufficiently and aligned together with policies and the strategies of the government. Recognition of the role of the CIO is what has been considered to be a reticence in terms of the significances as it may be plagued by huge turnover rates both in the public and private service sectors. Specifically in the public service sector, there are severe rates of turnover which has caused instability can be assumed that the role in the public sector which is seen to be still at the infancy stage in terms of its development has not been fully implemented as I is suppose to be so that it can match with the policies and strategies laid by the government. In this paper, the role of the CIO will be discussed, in a further note; a comparison will be made on how the private and public service sectors grant authorities to their CIO and the roles they play in their organization. A future expectations of the CIO will also be give in the paper concerning their roles and responsibilities of the public service sectors as they are experienced by the private service sector. The paper will finally conclude by giving useful CIO roles that are emerging in the public sector (Schubert, 2004). Role of the CIO Early in the 80s, the CIO was considered to be responsible for the senior execution of corporate information policies standards and controlling of management in the information resources. In this case the CIO was considered not only as a technical expert but also a manager. The attributes of a CIO at the time was management, information technology specialist, management, political, communication skills, and organizational skills in order to have an understanding of how to go about in managing the entire business. In the ability to manage well the technical experts, the CIO should have developed proper skills in human resource management, able to plan strategies that will lead to change in the future, the CIO should also be able to be sensitive to organizational, human and the social consequences of the new technological innovations and be able to plan proactively. From this perspective, the CIO is considered as an executive manager and a technical expert on the other hand. Later, the CIO was also branded as technical specialist and also business generalist. This therefore means that the CIO role is connected to technical issues (Stenzel, Cokins, Flemming, Hill, Hugos, Niven, Stratton & Schubert, 2010). From the above discussion, it is clear that a CIO is not successful if managerial skills are lacking in the profile. In order to fully exploit the information technology in an organization so as to acquire credible investment, the CIO ought to have managerial skills. Responsibilities of the CIO There are several views presented on what actually constitutes to the responsibilities of the CIO. They have been identified to have some consequences in three parts. They include; increase in orientation of staff, reduce in direct line responsibilities and finally, responsible for corporate resource and strategy in information resource. On another note, the CIO is all about being competitive in technology, cost effectiveness and within the organization. There are also crucial roles of a CIO which comprise of struggling for tenure, determination of value add in the information technology investment. Generally, a CIO is required to be equipped with organizational skills as they treated as executive managers. There are specified areas of long term responsibilities and they include; procedures and guidelines for information resources, competitive advantage improvement from the organizational functions, strategic planning of information resources, expenditure acceptance, information technology coordination, functional units, educating the management. From this context, the CIO is regarded as a communication executive linked to finance and human resource that has an effect and not only a driving element. Future of the CIO The future of the CIO is not well defines in terms of its responsibilities and the operation granted to them. Series of researches have been conducted on what has actually altered the structure in a time frame and also investigating on their need in the future. The findings reveal that a CIO is required to be well conversant with communication skills, is in ability to train and educate the management together with the users. It is therefore expected that in the future of the CIO will shift from the operational responsibilities to strategic management, there will be a need to redefine the success of the CIO to use strategies in order to develop goals of the business. The information technology will divert their attention of the CIO from focusing on the internal customers and put they efforts to external customers, service providers, partners and other associates within its chain. The core responsibility of the CIO will be mainly to engage in the management of human capital, the responsibilities of the CIO will be narrowed to information technology Investment management, IT portfolio, and assessment of risks (Bahl, 2010). There responsibility of business continuity and recovery of disaster will be sees as core responsibilities, CIO will be expected to grasp more on processes of finance and accounting. CIO models This paper also analyses various models and their effectiveness towards the success of CIO within an organization in the public sector. In regard to the models available that can best analyze the roles and responsibilities of CIO in order to improve the public sector in the future will be developed to act as a guide for further research. The models are discussed in detail below. The first is a model that has been conceptualized in order to come up with a successful two way relationship, which is between the CEO and the CIO, much concern should be emphasized. Within the same model, the attributes and roles of a CIO are all about orientation and good background that is well built in the career. The CIO should also have concepts in IT and be business oriented. Through this, one get to clear identify the roles and responsibilities of a CIO and the skills that are need for qualification. The public service sector is hereby considered in this part as it is still developing and is at the infancy stage. The success of public service sector is required that they come up with guidelines that will allow them to move forward. In this model, the roles of a CIO have been identified together with responsibilities that he undertakes. This model seems to contradict with what had been discussed earlier on skills and attributes of a CIO. IT is considered to shallowly forecast the role via CIO Business Orientation. In this model CIO attributes are highlighted though relationships with the CEO are also made. Another model was made on whether the CIO was of any benefit o the business world such as business executive and IT relationships information system performance business imperatives. This model stressed mainly on those issues of CIO that are related to Information System and Information Technology. Later in the years, the relationship between the CIO and CEO were tested and the findings were that CIO is more concern with IT roles is responsibilities while CEO deals with general issues of the business. Private sector This sector comprise of small, medium and large scale organizations whereby an individual or a group of individuals are the real owners who are refer in business as shareholders. In funding the service sector of that is privately owned, finances emanate from either fee that are paid by customers who are in exchange for a good or a service, alternatively, finances can also be acquired through purchase of shares. Shareholders can sell part of their shares in order to get more finances in order to help them improve their services. What are normally used in expanding the business are mainly the surpluses that are got from the sale of shares. This therefore means that public funds are not required at all in order to keep the private sector in operation. What actually control that private sector is the forces that are acting in the market or the economy. Their abilities to undertake, operate and be successful are usually determined by the market forces. They can be burred by barriers such as new market entries, fluctuation of interest rates and exchange rates. Public service sector Public sector can be defined as an enterprise where that government, state or local government is in control over it. Some of the public service sectors include government departments, local government authorities and agencies. They are created by the parliament. Finances are collectively generated through various political communities at various levels of government. Essential services are exchanged for taxes in local, state and federal citizens. In this case, market forces do not control but the political system that is in place, for instance, when a new political comes into power then operation of the public sector will be affected. It is therefore clear that the two sectors have differed in the way they are owned, financed and controlled. Their mode of management functions in a similar manner. In both the private and public sector, working under stated goals in order to serve the purpose of the organization is still the order of the day despite their other differences. In sectors, planning, human resource motivation, controlling the performance of the organization both externally and internally is evidenced. The difference between the private and public sector in their CIO emerges on how they consider their time, relation with the media, legal barriers, authority, and personal constraints are not similar. In this case, there are three characteristics that have been put across concerning the public sector and that which bring the difference of the two sectors clearly. First is the fact that the public sector is characterized with bureaucratic leadership. The procedures that are engaged in are more formal especially in making decisions. They are not flexible and are therefore risk-averse as compared to the private sector. Secondly, the public sector is characterized by the red tape whereby there are numerous irrelevant rules that have been imposed and are more concerned on following the stated ruled rather than the performance and results in the long run. Lastly, the public sector denies managers the freedom to execute their service as they are required to consult with the top level authorities. This is quite hard especially in times of emergencies as managers ought to report their issues to their seniors who will in turn report the same to their seniors and the chain continues as time elapse. In order to fully understand the future of CIO’s responsibilities and roles of public sector, the diagram below can explain better. The diagram has been compiled after a detailed review of literature review so as to act as a guideline to this paper (Zuckerman, Freeman, Miller, Jindal, Yano, Donovan & Bonomi, 2008). From the above analysis, it is clear that management of information system in either public or private organizations is complicated and multidimensional. The above discussion had set private sector as a baseline for the public sector in the roles and responsibilities of CIOs. There is less research that has been done embracing the public sector and the roles it plays in boosting the social and economic life in a state or a country (Baschab & Piot, 2007). The role CIO in private is shifting from technical planning to implementation and strategic planning. With the current challenges, the role of the CIO is coming out to be engaged with tactics rather than strategies. There is need to have tactics to combat the competition. The private sector has introduced new role which seems to be focusing on implementing specific roles rather than implementing long-term technologies for the organization. On the other hand, public service sector CIO is required to implement long term strategies for the organization, this is changing fast. Many researches have shown that chief information officers are being diverted from long-term implementation to fire-fighting projects in the quest to solve some business issues that face the organization from time to time. The vision of the IT function is limited and has been static for a long time. In fact, there are calls to make it expand. The role of knowledge management in an organization is known to all the executive officers and thus including this to IT function will not be difficult task for the management. Knowledge management is recognized as a very vital component of strategic planning. This new function will have an impact in the future training and recruitment of chief information officers (Bahl, 2010). Conclusion There are various perspectives on which private and public sectors are view as per this paper. It is also clear that several opinions have been aired out on the relationship and differences that exist between the two factors. In understanding the issues of CIO, is it essential to focus on both the components of CIO and at the same time recognizing and realizing their different evolutions that has taken place in the two sectors. As earlier evaluated, there are three key differences that are evidenced in the two sectors. They include source of finance, the controlling aspect and there determinants of operation and success (Stenzel, Cokins, Flemming, Hill, Hugos, Niven, Stratton & Schubert, 2010). References Baschab, J., & Piot, J. (2007). The executive guide to information technology. NY: John Wiley and Sons. Bloem, J., Doorn, M., & Mittal, P. (2005). Making IT governance work in a Sarbanes-Oxley world. NY: John Wiley and Sons. Grover, V., Jeong, S., Kettinger, W., & Lee, C. (2005). The chief information officer: a study of managerial roles. Journal of management information systems. Vol. 10. Issue2. Pp. 34-56 Hunter, G. (2010). The chief information officer: A review of the role. Journal of Information, Information Technology, and Organisations. Vol. 5. Issue 2. Pp. 442-453 Lane, Dean (2004). CIO wisdom: Best practices from Silicon Valley are leading IT experts. NY: Prentice Hall. Bahl, R. (2010). The role of CIO in a flat world. Retrieved on 20th January, 2011 from http://www.infosys.com/flat-world/business/perspectives/Documents/bahl-perspective.pdf Portela, L., Carvalho, R., Varajao, J., & Magalhaes, L. (2010). A review of chief information officer main skills. Communications in computer and information science. Vol. 112. Issue 12. Pp. 387-392. Schubert, Karl (2004). CIO survival guide: The roles and responsibilities of the chief information officer. NY: John Wiley and Sons. Stenzel, J., Cokins, G., Flemming, B., Hill, A., Hugos, M., Niven, P., Stratton, A., & Schubert, K. (2010). CIO best practices: Enabling strategic value information technology. NY: John Wiley and Sons. Zuckerman, D., Freeman, H., Miller, R., Jindal, B., Yano., Lynch, R., Donovan, J., & Bonomi, F. (2008). CMSOC’s chief information officer – technology serving the society. Communications magazine. Vol. 46. Issue 10. Pp. 54-65. Read More