Case study: How this CIO is stomping silos

It's about changing mindsets, inside and outside IT

IT is often considered – by those working in it, as much as anyone – a separate function from a company’s core business. But integration is the key to unlocking innovation.

Despite many years of DevOps, firms still struggle with siloed business functions. Finance doesn't talk to HR; HR doesn't talk to R&D; Sales and Marketing are their own separate bubble; and IT doesn't talk to anyone.

But maybe it would be just as accurate to say "no-one talks to IT." The department is often seen as a necessary evil: they keep the lights on and the website running, but you only really bother them when something goes wrong.

In the digital era, that approach sets yourself up for failure; and while some business leaders know that, IT leaders have to do their own part to drive change.

For Richard Corbridge - chief digital information officer & director general for DWP Digital - it starts at a very basic level:

"When you talk to IT people and they talk about ‘the business', it kind of always feels like it's steps away from what we are doing. We tried really hard to [think about] how we talk about ‘our business,' and stop treating it as this thing that exists in separation."

He says DWP is "not an IT organisation," so the IT team can't run the show, but the Department for Work and Pensions as a whole is heavily involved in both digital and transformation. These elements are important to DWP's customers, as well as being places where the team's expertise can shine.

"I think that's been a big silo breaker, to get to the point where digital people consider them[selves] first to be part of DWP and a transformation agent who has expertise in certain technology or certain data capability, and that's landed. It's landed really well, actually and [has] really quickly been bought into."

The "Connecting with our Customers" programme, based around getting digital people "back into job centres to actually see how colleagues are using our systems," ties into that. The intent is to understand how IT is being used on the frontlines, where tech can help, and what the gaps are that need filling.

The programme is similar to one Richard ran successfully when he was CIO at Boots.

Perfectly professional

With the team working more closely with other departments, Richard wanted to reinforce the growing perception of IT as a trusted partner by focusing on "professionalisation."

"We've focused a lot on that professionalisation of the role of technology inside the organisation. Why is it that if you're in HR, you have to - have to - have letters after your name? If you're in Finance, you have to have letters after your name that prove your professional standing in your role. In tech, you don't tend to have to have those."

While qualifications for IT professionals do exist, like CompTIA or CAPM, they're not as widely recognised as those in other sectors. Many, like AWS Cloud Practitioner or Microsoft Fundamentals, only relate to specific vendors.

In the UK, though, there is an industry body known as the gold standard of education and qualification: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, with whom Computing partners every year for the UK IT Industry Awards.

DWP IT professionals can access BCS qualifications from Chartered IT Professional (CITP), all the way up to Fellowship (FBCS). It's been put in place "across DWP, so people can go through that whole sort of credibility of who they are."

Siloed working is a major blocker for many CIOs, but Richard's work to integrate the IT team more deeply into DWP has gone down "exceptionally well," creating relationships that continue to grow in strength.

The key, he says, has been giving people "a bit of pride in the thing that it is we do."