Admiration for BBC IT department
Innovation ranks it higher than Vodafone and Tesco, according to research
The BBC has the most admired IT department in the UK, beating Vodafone and Tesco into joint second place, according to new research.
In a survey of more than 100 CIO’s from the top 100 UK organisations, the BBC attracted 19 per cent of the vote ahead of the two retailers on 15 per cent.
Surprisingly, given its huge online presence, financial institutions fared the worst with the Royal Bank of Scotland and Abbey each receiving just one per cent of the vote.
Other highly-rated IT departments included O2, Amazon.com and BSkyB.
The research was conducted by Influencer50 on behalf of 7irene and also found that Vodafone CIO Paul Whybrow was the most admired private sector CIO in the UK, ahead of Tesco’s Colin Cobain and BT’s Al-Noor Ramji.
In the public sector, Government CIO John Suffolk was voted top CIO (29 per cent), followed by Richard Granger, director general of NHS IT (21 per cent) and Jim Murphy, parliamentary secretary at the Cabinet Office (16 per cent).
Pundarik Ranchhod, director at 7irene, said: ‘The BBC’s innovation in its news website, broadband and streaming media has undoubtedly helped it progress from third place last year to first.
‘Implementing new technologies for its viewers and listeners is placing it ahead of any major broadcast organisation in the world and the American networks have their eyes on what the BBC's doing.’
The survey also asked for reasons why all but two of the CIO’s at top 40 companies were male, with 37 per cent believing it was because of a boy’s club mentality.
A further 21 per cent thought it was due to ‘technical roles generally being male-oriented’, 24 per cent believed ‘women aren’t generally interested in that sort of role’ and 13 per cent said that it was simply due to the fact that ‘the right people for the jobs happened to be male’.
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