The Competencies of the Chief Information Officer (CIO). An Analysis of the Federal US CIO Council Members' Background
The Competencies of the Chief Information Officer (CIO). An Analysis of the Federal US CIO Council Members' Background

Summary/Abstract: This article is trying to answer two main questions: “What should the competencies of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) be?”; “Do the persons holding CIO positions have such competencies?”. I tried to answer the first question searching into the history and theory of the Information Resources Management. I focused in the beginning on the interdisciplinary roots of the domain which, in my opinion, should be also present in the background of its managers, i.e. CIOs. Usually, the technical experience and skills of a CIO are taken for granted, so I wanted to reveal what other competencies a modern CIO should have for being proficient. There are some myths about what a CIO is, and such as: “CIOs may know about tech, but they fall short on people’’; “CIOs live in silos, and are only concerned about their own department’s performance”; “CIOs usually earned some kind of techie degree along the way”;“The buck stops here (1), at the CIO’s desk, on all tech decisions”. I went than and analyzed the US Federal CIO Council, focusing on the background of its members.By doing this, I wanted to destroy the above myths, and to prove that it is indeed are a lity to have CIOs with competencies beyond the technical area, which, by the way,are striving to share their experience to others CIOs to be.

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