Introduction:
A typical organization’s leadership team is comprised of executives each with his individual area of expertise and responsibilities. There are roles for the leadership of personnel, legal, finance, procurement, operations and even future planning. The titles of these positions in the commercial and public sector often have names such as Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Comptroller or Executive Director (Connolly 2013). In the early 1980s, as appreciation for the need to integrate technology strategies with business strategies grew, so did the recognition of the need for executive level leadership of technology. This role was initially a secondary responsibility of one of the existing executives with the technical director or IT manager aligned under an existing executive.
Recognizing data and information as a corporate asset, companies began to designate the Chief Information Officer (CIO) as the executive dedicated to ensuring that the organization’s information related investments, policies, people and operations enable the organization’s goals (Connolly 2013). The authorities granted to a CIO range from one limited to monitoring policy compliance to one with full budgetary control of information related investments and operations (Schaefer 2015); (Palmisano et al. 2016).
In a commercial or public enterprise, the CIO represents the Policy Stakeholder group.
US Government CIO Structure
The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 Public Law 104–13 (2008) established the role of CIO within the U.S. government. The executive branch of the U.S. government has a tiered structure of CIOs each assigned to the various departments, agencies and components within the executive branch. The CIOs of each layer of the government implement the policies and strategies established by the CIO of the executive branch (EOP [CIO] 2016). The DOD CIO leads the DOD segment of the CIO network with a CIO at each level of the department, its components and commands (DOD [CIO] 2016). The authorities and expectation of the government’s CIOs were further clarified in the Section VIII, Subtitle D Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (2014). The Act states all covered agencies shall ensure that the Chief Information Officer of all U.S. government agencies have a significant role in the decision processes for all annual and multiyear planning, programming, budgeting, and execution decisions, related reporting requirements, and reports related to information technology; and the management, governance, and oversight processes related to information technology. (PL 113–291 113th Congress)
The Department of the Navy (DON) CIO reports to the DOD CIO who in turn reports to the Federal CIO. The Federal CIO is a senior executive within the President’s Office of Management and Budget. Within the DON, the Marine Corps and Navy each have CIOs assigned at the headquarters level and each echelon of their respective command structures (SecNav 2016); (EoP [CIO] 2016)
The DON CIO and the command CIOs represent the policy stakeholder group within an IT Enterprise charged within implementing the President’s Enterprise Information vision within the statutes defined by Congress.
For more information on the typical Stakeholders and Authorities within an IT Enterprise See: