NASCIO, Grant Thornton and CompTIA Release 2015 State CIO Survey
SALT LAKE CITY, Ut., Tuesday, October 13 – The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), Grant Thornton LLP and CompTIA today released the 2015 annual survey of state chief information officers (CIOs), The Value Equation: Agility in Sourcing, Software and Services, which shows that the role — and necessary leadership skills — of successful state CIOs is rapidly evolving to keep pace with the changing IT and business landscape.
In this sixth annual survey, state CIOs were asked to share their perspectives on a number of topics, with a particular focus on the emerging role of the CIO as a broker of shared services; the use of incremental software development approaches to accelerate the delivery of value to customers; and characteristics respondents felt were most valuable for and critical to the success of a state CIO.
“State CIOs continue to preside over an increasingly diverse set of service delivery models and sourcing options,” said Doug Robinson, executive director of NASCIO. “At the same time, customer expectations continue to rise, so state CIOs must be agile enough to adapt to changing circumstances and to rapidly deliver business value.”
All respondents to the survey said they expected in the future to be functioning as a broker of shared services for at least some of their services. This is clearly the state CIO business model of the future – the differences will be in the mix of services provided and in the proportion of assets owned and operated by the state.
“The state information technology and business landscape continues to change, reflecting both emerging approaches to delivering IT products and services, and also the faster-paced, more complex environment faced by state CIOs,” said Jennifer Grutzius, director of state and local government and education at CompTIA.
Finally, the survey asked state CIOs to rank the three most important leadership traits critical to the success of a state CIO. By a wide margin, “Communicator” was viewed as the most important, with “Strategist” and “Relationship Manager” ranked as the second and third most important. CIOs also were asked what they viewed as the most critical dimension of their role, and cited “Enterprise vision and strategy” as the top choice.
“This year’s survey covered a wide variety of topics,” said Graeme Finley, managing director in Grant Thornton’s Global Public Sector practice. “but a common theme emerged throughout the survey – the importance of delivering value to the business customer. The state CIO organization must increasingly be seen as the provider of choice if it is to succeed, and the state CIO will lead this evolution.”
The report is available on the NASCIO website at www.nascio.org/StateCIOSurvey
