That CIOs should be appointed to their companies` boards of directors is the strongest message to emerge from the first day of ITWeb`s IT Governance conference, in Midrand yesterday.
"Companies who put CIOs on the board have made the first step to successful IT governance," judge Mervyn King, chairman of the King committee on corporate governance, told delegates.
IT governance is about how the board regulates and manages IT, not how the IT department manages itself, he said.
"Often a CIO will make a presentation to the board, and then walk away while the directors make a decision [concerning IT governance]. The CIO is not involved, and is not culpable or responsible in any way - and often problems are only realised some time later," he explained.
Digital risks
Visiting international speaker Alan Calder, founding director of the company IT Governance, supported these sentiments during a panel discussion.
The modern company, he said, is exposed to an increasing number of "digital risks".
He listed more sophisticated threats, technological evolution (such as VOIP and iPods), commercial migration to the Internet (in terms of commerce and communication), and generally increased worldwide Internet usage as the four key factors creating greater levels of vulnerability.
Lenore Kerrigan, Mercury`s alliance director in the sub-Saharan region, said: "I totally agree with and support the notion that a CIO should be on the board."
She highlighted the difficulty of reconciling business-minded people with technologically-minded people, and said economic returns from IT projects are often not tangible, and this is not always recognised fully by business-focused executives.
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