Tag Archives: Cloud Computing

Irish government seeking to appoint a CIO

Just read this today:

Chief Information Officer for the Irish Government

This is an exceptional opportunity for an experienced ICT professional to influence a major change programme, to provide guidance and leadership at the executive level across the entire IT spectrum, and to take responsibility for the development of the ICT strategy for Government and the wider public service.

Reporting to the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, this position will hold ultimate responsibility for the strategic direction of technology in support of the wider mission and strategic change objectives in the Public Sector. The successful candidate will lead the CIO Council and will drive the implementation of the eGovernment and Cloud Computing strategies.

The successful candidate will have experience of developing technology strategy and delivery of leading edge large scale ICT solutions in a complex environment.

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This is a five year fixed-term contract.

Will be interesting to see ho this role evolves/ develops…’driving the implementation of eGovernment and Cloud Computing strategies’.

The Irish Government has demonstrated to potential of IT through initiatives such as ROS – supporting/ driving self assessment, cash collection. process automation. And yet it continues to be burdened by a number of inefficient processes and barriers to change.

I have commented previously on my reservations about the CIO role in industry – because of what is expected. These challenges will be no less in public life. I commend ‘the Real Business of IT – How CIOs Create and Communicate Value’ (Hunter & Westerman) to the successful applicant. The CIO will need a Minister (and Ministers) committed to leveraging IT and making the changes. Ultimately the realisation of the benefits of eGovernment and cloud strategies should be another measure of the success or failure of government leadership. The CIO has the potential to assist Government in succeeding.

Irish firm delivering cloud based accounting solutions

Moving on from traditional thinking

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I guess it’s challenging for all of us who have worked for the last 25 years. In my final year in Trinity College Dublin I was writing Assembler for the Motorola 68000 chip. The Mac was about to burst on the scene. Since then I have worked in a Professional Service Firm, my own IT consulting business and with a number of start up businesses.

Many of us have come to think of the business entity as the key business unit – be it a company, a group of companies, a sole trader, a partnership. And businesses do business with other businesses – ordering, buying, selling, etc. And each business operates to a set of standards – standards to meet their own expectations and those of their customers. Many of the standards are driven, underpinned or enforced by external agencies e.g. State, Professional bodies, Insurerers, regulators.

The web has had all sorts of impacts on business – the emergence of online B2B abd B2C, major reengineering of processes and business themselves, globalisation on a par not expected.

And now the web is throwing new opportunities and challenges at all of us. In fact one can only wonder if we had had this web 10 years ago what types of businesses would have been built over the last 10 years? Which businesses would never have existed?

Even back in 1984 in TCD we were collaborating – as we worked in a group of three students to design our basic computer. We also collaborated on the cricket field as we set traps for opposition batsmen. And we collaborated in preparing for exams – through sharing of lecture notes, etc.

But what we are witnessing now is a series of developments – Social networking, Semantic web, the cloud – which when combined mean that those who do not collaborate risk being eliminated. We have often discussed the importance of knowledge management within the organisation – even between partner organisations. However the tools beginning to emerge now promise to facilitate collaboration and knowledge management on a scale previously unimagined – right across the globe, the web and time. ultimately traditional business practices and structures must be transformed to enable society to benefit from what’s beginning to happen.