Following the News that the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was starting a recruitment drive to find London’s first ever Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Khan promised to recruit a CDO with a responsibility for overseeing growth in the sector and increasing “digital inclusion” across the capital. Andrew Clarke, EMEA Director at One Identity commented below.
Andrew Clarke
“The fact Sadiq Khan has announced the appointment of London’s first CDO should come as no surprise. Gartner has predicted that Chief data officers (CDOs) will exist in 90 per cent of enterprises by the end of 2019.
Since a CDO is responsible for digitally transforming an organization, a good understanding of overall operations of the business as well as the current state of IT should be a key competency. The ideal candidate will know how to transform – so a visionary outlook is also necessary. They will also likely be stepping on the toes of existing CIO and CTOs, so diplomacy will also be a favourable characteristic. BA candidate should also be able to determine which information adds business value, drives increased efficiency and improves overall risk management and express the change effectively and eloquently, so a communicative nature would also be encouraged.
The CDO should be treated as a hybrid role; a person that is comfortable with technology and continuous change, but also has a good experience of how a business functions – from a day-to-day basis to the successful introduction of innovation.
Gartner’s outlined recommendations for new CDOs include; Forming an enterprise information management strategy, building trust with the CIO, educating senior leaders about the importance of data, establishing key indicators to measure and tying these to business metrics and adopting formal information asset measures.”
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