On Wednesday I attended a Computer Weekly 500 Club event for UK CIOs and IT leaders at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London. A lively event looking at the challenges CIOs face in 2010. When I arrived at the hotel I was surprised to see more police officers than you would expect at a derby football game – I hadn’t taken CIOs for the rowdy type.
It then dawned on me that the Security Council meeting organised by Gordon Brown with attendees including President Kharsai of Afghanistan was being held virtually next door.
Within the CW500 club event security didn’t get much of a mention (which is a surprise for an IT event), nor did outsourcing, integration, IT skills or other favourites. The topic of presentations and discussion had a much grander focus – Innovation – and its role for UK PLC. Discussion also touched on the ability of the UK to innovate as a nation as well as gazing ahead with some futurology.
As to be expected with both speakers being drawn from the Hothouse Panel, the thinking was expansive. Professors Peter Cochrane & James Woudhuysen were both on good form. The delegate list was very impressive and I noticed John Suffolk the Government CIO was in attendance, although I didn’t get a chance to ask him about the plans to reduce the public sector IT budget by £3.2 billion which would have been fascinating
Peter spoke first and got us underway with a lively observation that the technology cycle is upon a CIO and his user base ever more quickly, with technology advancing every 9 months. Conversely management teams often take 2.5 years to make strategic technology decisions. A second challenge highlighted was the role of Generation Y workers, who often plug in their own devices to the network. Peter advocates a more de-centralised approach to IT in the future, observing that command and control management is ineffective today.
Peter’s speech highlighted that the PC has often been turned into an inflexible CC or Corporate Computer – which younger generations simply wont stand for and increasingly the CFO won’t pay for. More freedom for individual users to make the technology personal to them reduces spending, improves relevance and frees IT for strategic modelling and data analysis.
Cochrane then moved on to the issue of cloud computing citing the Telegraph media group going Google and the impending clash between CIOs and CFOs. CFOs he argued don’t often understand the value creation ability of the IT department. Peter made the point the as consumers we are all essentially subscribed to Google-like clouds with our moist important data being above the skyline “do you know where your banking bits and bytes are? I don’t. I just hope my bank doesn’t keep them in one place, relax and get on with being productive”.
James spoke second and made a passionate case for greater investment in innovation asking the CIOs to stop simply focusing on how to shave the odd million off their outsourced contracts. Instead they should focus on re-igniting the spirit of innovation for competitive advantage. The advice from Woudhuysen was to stop focusing on Gartner benchmarks (at this point there was a mini eruption of laughter, with one delegate pointing out that Gartner has stopped primary research) and to channel the talent from within the technology team.
James was equally damning of the national innovation agenda pointing out that Lord Drayson’s fund for UK start-ups requires the business to prove the outcome of it’s R&D before a grant is awarded “stating the outcome of research before it’s been conducted?! I wish I could do that, I’d be a rich man”. He then advised CIOs not to be afraid to channel resources into the linear model of innovation, setting problems and asking people to go away and solve them.
All in all the event was a rallying cry for IT leaders to get back to what they do best, strategic projects that can make innovative and drastic changes to how a company operates and the direction it takes. A positive message that seemed to resonate with the audience. I hope I get the chance to attend a few more through the year.