Employes across the organization must work closely together to develop strategic initiatives that create competitive advantages.
Understanding the basic structure of a typical IT department including titles, roles and responsibilities.
IT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
i) Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Responsible for overseeing all uses of information technology and ensuring the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives.
Often reports directly to the CEO.
Posses solid and detailed understanding of every aspect of an organization coupled with tremendous insight into the capability of IT.
Broad functions include: Manager, Leader, and Communicator.
Figure 5.1
FIGURE 5.1 shows the Average CIO Compensation by Industry
Figure 5.2
FIGURE 5.2 shows What Concerns CIOs the Most?
Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of an organization's information technology.
Have direct responsibility for ensuring the efficiency of IT system throughout the organization.
Posses well-rounded knowledge of all aspects of IT, including hardware,software,and telecommunications.
iii)Chief Security Officer (CSO)
Responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems and developing strategies and IT safeguards against attacks from hackers and viruses.
Posses detailed knowledge of network and telecommunications because hackers and viruses usually find their way into IT systems through networked computers.
iv)Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)
Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information within the organization.
Newest senior executive position in IT.
Lawyers by training, enabling them to understand the often complex legal issues surrounding the use of information.
v)Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)
Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization's knowledge.
Designs programs and systems that make it easy for people to reuse knowledge.
The systems create repositories of organizational documents, methodologies, tools, and practices and they establish methods for filtering the information.
Figure 5.3
FIGURE 5.3 shows that Skills Pivotal for Success in Executive IT Roles
All the above IT positions and responsibilities are critical to an organization's success.
Each organizations may not have a different individual for each of these positions, they must have leaders taking responsibility for all these areas of concern.
THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS PERSONNEL AND IT PERSONNEL
Business personnel posses expertise in functional areas such as marketing, accounting, sales, and so forth while IT personnel have the techological expertise.
Communications gap often exists where business personnel have their own vocabularies based on experience and expertise. While IT personnel have their own vocabularies consisting of acronyms and technical terms.
Effective communication between IT and business personnel should be a two-way street each side making the effort to better understand the other.
Improving Communications
Business personnel must seek to increase their understanding in IT which it will benefits their careers to understand what they can and cannot accomplish using IT.
Business-oriented IT magazines should be read by the business managers and leaders to increase their IT knowledge.
In addition, an organization must develop strategies for integrating its IT personnel into the various business functions.
IT personnel must understand the business if the organization is going to determine which technologies can benefits the business.
CIO must ensuring effective communications happen between business and IT personnel.
ORGANIZATIONAL FUNDAMENTALS-ETHICS AND SECURITY
Ethics ans security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses on.
When the behavior of a few individuals can destroy billion-dollar organizations because of a lapse in ethics or security, the value of highly ethical and highly secure organizations should be evident.
I) ETHICS
The ethical issues surrounding copyright infringement and intellectual property rights are consuming the e-business world.
ETHICS : the principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people.
Figure 5.4
FIGURE 5.4 shows the Issues Affected by Technology Advances
PRIVACY: the right to be left alone when you want to be, to have control over your own personal possessions, and not to be observed without your consent.
Privacy has become a major ethical issue as some of the most problematic decisions organizations face lie in the murky and turbulent waters of privacy.
Widespread fear about privacy continues to be one of the biggest barriers to the growth of e-business.
If an organization can effectively address the issue of privacy, its customers, partners, and suppliers may lose trust in the organization which will hurts the business itself.
II) SECURITY- How Much Will Downtime Cost Your Business?
The leading cause of downtime is a software failure followed by human error, according to Infonetics research.
Unplanned downtime can strike at any time from any number of causes, ranging from tornadoes to sink over flows to network failures to power outages.
The reliability and resilience of IT systems have never been more essential for success as businesses cope with the forces of globalization, 24/7 operations, government and trade regulations, and overextended IT budgets and resources.
Unexpected downtime in business environment has the potential to cause both short and long term cost with far-reaching consequences.
by understanding the information security's role in a business is critical to keeping downtime to a minimum and uptime to a maximum.
Figure 5.5
FIGURE 5.5 shows the Sources of Unplanned Downtime
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