IT chiefs need to go back to basics

IT bosses should take a much more people centric approach to management next year

A key priority for IT chiefs in 2007 should be taking a back-to-basics, people-focused approach to technology development, according to Capgemini’s UK chief technology officer.

Carl Bate told IT Week that “the tired old problem with the business/IT divide” will continue into 2007. “CIOs should have a fantastic role, with a horizontal view across the business and helping to improve operations,” he said. “But their role is often so full of tension. They get less budget but have to deliver more value; boards want innovation but also industrialisation and there’s a low success rate of IT-enabled business change.”

Advancements in technology mean the CIO role has become even more complex. “We’re in a stage of ‘bricolage’, with people using any available tool - Word documents, post-it notes, Google - to get the job done,” Bate explained. “It’s a corporate governance nightmare. IT is putting in systems to help operational efficiencies and policy enforcement, but people are using the web and other tools to get the job done.”

To counter these problems, Bate said there was a need to revisit the information systems trends of 20 years ago, an area Capgemini has been working on with its clients. “With information systems, it was all about putting people first,” he argued. “Now there’s lots of focus around IT and innovation, but we’ve lost the people-focus. IT departments need to consider why a person would adopt a certain technology rather than use a spreadsheet, for example.”

As well as promoting a “back to the future” approach, Bate cited service-oriented architectures, convergence, green IT and the rise of web models as the hot trends for next year.

Bate predicted a shift in corporate IT systems as they become supplemented by more web models. “We’ll see less generous return on investment on major corporate IT projects because of this. Corporate IT systems do add value, but they need to retain a focus on real-world events and what people actually want.”

Despite the heavy focus by vendors and government on energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly IT systems this year, Bate argued that this is a new area that firms are just starting to ask questions about. “It’s not top of the IT department agenda. At the moment green IT is about devices and power consumption issues, but end-to-end green computing is the key, and we’ll see more of this next year,” he said. “Green IT is starting to come into some of Capgemini’s outsourcing core propositions, especially around power management.”