The CIO of a major health care firm speculated last week that the CIO job itself could disappear over the next 10 years, with responsibility accruing to the emerging role of Chief Data Officer.

James, Noga, VP and CIO of Partners HealthCare. , said CIOs will have less responsibility for managing infrastructure complexities as more of those functions move to the cloud. In an interview with Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly of SiliconANGLE at the MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium, Noga said this kind of change isn’t new.

“In the 1800’s, every manufacturing plant had its own power plant. Yes, we’re still building data centers, but I think you’re going to see less of that,” said Noga.

Noga advises CIO’s to to focus on the ‘optimizations of workflow processes’, offering LEAN and Six Sigma as examples. Although CIO’s are typically enablers of the business strategy, the goal of optimizing the business is going to become more important. Noga said CIO’s are effectively morphing into Chief Operating Officers and that the day is coming when “when a COO is fairly competent in information technology as well as business operations,” with a CDO or CTO reporting to them. The COO and CIO roles are converging he said.

Getting Involved in Business Operations

The challenge for CIOs is to address non-IT issues from a business strategy perspective. Noga recommended that CIO’s actively engage senior leadership, adding that they may even have to push some doors open as opposed to waiting for doors to be opened for them.

“You’re no longer at the end of the line. As decisions are made, you become part of that formation of the strategy rather than a receiver of the strategy,” said Noga.

Advice for CIO’s

Rather than seeing this transition as a threat, Noga thinks that CIO’s should see it as an opportunity for additional influence and visibility.  “Maybe [the CIO] will retain the title, but regardless, I think it will be as I’ve described it – more of a COO role,” he said.

See Noga’s entire segment below: