UPDATED 09:39 EDT / JULY 24 2015

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Identity crisis: Will CDO role make CIOs irrelevant? | #MITCDOIQ

The chief information officer (CIO) role seems to go through a crisis about once every decade, from the “career is over” one-liners of the 1990s to Nicholas Carr’s 2003 declaration that “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Its newest challenge may come from the emerging function of the chief data officer (CDO).

This week’s MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium made it clear that the CDO concept is still ill-defined and tentative, much as the CIO role was in the 1980s. But if current trends in the market play out, you have to wonder what role the CIO will play a decade from now.

Although things like reporting structures and even CDO job descriptions are still all over the map (Wikipedia lists no less than five common reporting lines), one thing that’s clear is that CDOs represent the interests of the business. Regardless of whether a company is still slogging through structure and governance issues or using data strategically, the CDO is responsible for finding ways to innovate through the use of data.

Historically, that’s been the goal of most CIOs as well, but the gnarly details of keeping the lights on and the equipment running have gotten in the way. Maintenance still eats up 70% of corporate IT budgets, and probably about the same amount of CIO time. As Neuralytix analyst Ben Woo put it, “CIO stands for chief infrastructure officer.”

But infrastructure is going away. Maybe not today or in five years, but there’s no question that the cloud is now the data center of choice for new companies and IT projects. As the need to manage infrastructure fades, CIOs will face a new crisis: Become strategic or become redundant.

I question how many will be able to make the transition. The CIO job is so demanding that there is little time for thinking about business strategy. In my experience, most CIOs are more comfortable talking about project management than profit and loss. Only a handful have ever made the leap to the top corporate spot.

Even the CDO title has ominous overtones for CIOs. The dictionary tells us that data and information are practically synonymous. Why do organizations need two top executives to manage information?

Perhaps it’s because CIOs have failed to live up to their titles. They’ve become experts at capturing and protecting information but not at using it. The rise of the CDO concept raises the stakes. How many are up to the challenge?

There’s no guarantee that the title of CDO has staying power. C-level concepts come and go (remember the “chief customer officer” fad of a few years ago?), and it’s far too early to declare this one a keeper. But regardless of whether the title persists, the concept is what matters. As General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt has said, every company must become a digital company. CIOs are the best candidates to get them there, if they can look up long enough to see the forest for the trees.

Wikibon’s David Vellante and I discussed this dynamic in our wrap-up of the MIT conference (17:59).

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