Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have been challenged to do more to deliver value to their businesses through technology. Louis Otieno, General Manager , Microsoft East and Cental Africa, said CIOs need to come out and demonstrate to their C-level colleagues that they understand the business and are aware of the bottom line and only this, will earn them a seat at the Boardroom.
He said the ability to deliver business value is the only way that CIOs can themselves relevant to their organisations. Otieno said this while making a keynote presentation at the ongoing CIO100 Symposium in Nairobi.
On his part, Andrew Waititu, SAP General Manager for East and Central Africa, advised CIOs to "look for technology that will bring change to the organisation". Adding that technology has to respond to business goals and objectives.
According to Waititu, CIOs should be in a position to use technology to drive and return value to the business and that the IT strategy must support the overall business strategy. This means CIOs must understand the business processes as well as they understand IT.
The CIOs new role sees them being required to drive innovation and change within the business, especially in an age where employees are a source of change in the businesses. This is especially true as users continuously demand to bring and use their own devices at work and use these devices to access company resources.
Louis Otieno contrasts the cost centered CIO to the value centered CIO, saying that a CIO who saves the organisation money will never get an invitation into the boardroom. Otieno says a cost centered CIO "focuses on purchasing technology at the least cost without aligning technologies with the business processes in a way that boosts value and impact for the enterprise. He always makes decisions based on price, compares technologies based on price and not value and suffers from mandate and budgetary challenge and therefore takes long to make decisions."
A value centered CIO "understands his organization well and makes decisions that are in the best interest of the company with the resources available to him. He is clear on return on investment expected, understands his suppliers and drives the discussion. He works closely with suppliers and confidently identifies his mandate within his organization. In addition he is always ahead of the curve in terms of technology available in the market" says Otieno. The Microsoft exec says that CIOs should move out of operations into the boardroom.
Sharing the same podium with Waititu and Otieno, the permanent secretary in Kenya's ministry of Information and Communication , Dr Bitange Ndemo, highlighted several initiatives that the government was doing to bring infrastructure and access to IT and services closer to the people. These included the National Fibre Optic Network (NOFBI) that connects 28 counties on a fibre optic backbone, government data centres and a proposed LTE Broadband network expected to go live in the next one year. The PS was however disappointed by the slow pace of development of local content despite the availability of infrastructure. "We can't build infrastructure for other people's content, " he said.
The PS was also talked about the geo-sensing agricultural platform that the government had implemented and urged developers to take advantage of the platform and develop applications on it. He said developers at the iHub and mLab should come up with applications that would benefit farmers and increase agricultural productivity. With the system, the PS says that a farmer can tell what crops they can grow successfully on a piece of land that they are standing on.
Dr Katherine Getao,ICT Secretary, Directorate of eGovernment, on her part highlighted benefits brought about by digitisation of the Company's Registry, at the Office of the Attorney General and the Lands Registry as the Ministry of Lands. The two registries are currently undergoing a business process re-engineering to rationalise and align the processes in line with effective and efficient service delivery before they become fully digitised. "We found some processes had more than 40 steps and we reduced them to 14 steps," she says. The ICT Secretary said that the ability to accept electronic payments, such as through mobile money, is another key component of electronic service delivery that the government is working on.
Other initiatives that the government is undertaking include the decentralisation of immigration services and the introduction of a smart identity card (ID). Dr Getao expects several public agencies and private firms to built applications based on the smart ID, such as driving license and the National Hospital Insurance Fund.