Ben Booth says that the wise CIO should prepare for
economic uncertainty
The foremost area of concern for IT directors in 2005 must be
uncertainty in the business environment. In the UK we have seen
economic recovery, with an attendant increase in IT spend. Economic
forecasters are predicting a decline towards the end of 2005, so we
must be prepared to tighten our belts if this happens.
Fortunately, as we have not seen the rapid increase observed in
previous "boom and bust" cycles, perhaps we can expect a soft
landing. But as we prepare our budgets for 2005, we must have some
contingency in case we need to economise or there is reduced demand
in Q4.
We know from government IT head Ian Watmore's recent speech to
the BCS Elite group that government priorities will continue to
focus on improving services to the citizen while maintaining the
balance between security and usability.
The security balancing act
Security remains a perennial concern for all IT installations:
spend too little time and effort and risk system corruption and
failure, spend too much and run the risk of being labelled a
"technology-obsessed nerd".
With the Freedom of Information Act coming into force earlier
this year, government bodies will be preparing for access requests.
At first sight this looks like an issue only for the public sector,
but other implications are becoming apparent. For instance, if you
bid for a government contract, do your tender documents, perhaps
containing trade secrets, become public documents, and can this be
prevented?
The burden of regulation continues to grow, with many of the
"regulated" industries reporting that up to 50% of their IT spend
is now going on regulation-related projects, and there seems to be
no reduction in this. One wonders whether this spending is at the
expense of other IT initiatives, or whether it is "new money"
raised through increasing the cost of services or reduced
margins.
Whatever the source of the spending, it means greater
responsibility for IT leaders, who must get more involved in
businesses' regulatory mechanisms.
Clearly, scandals such as Enron must be prevented, but I wonder
whether this is really money well spent, or whether a different
approach to fraud prevention could yield the same result without so
much non-productive expenditure. Is this a case of attempting to
find a technological remedy for a human behavioural problem?
Complex telecoms
Supply of telecoms seems set to remain complex in 2005, with
increased demands on the CIO to retain connectivity between
business units and provide for a wide range of remote workers.
Although large businesses are able to procure reliable and economic
connectivity, smaller firms still have to contend with poor
service. The challenge to carriers must be to combine reliability
with effective account management, configuration and
maintenance.
A further challenge in the telecoms area is the volume of spam.
Junk e-mail accounts for 90% of mail received in many businesses,
and all estimates point to over 50% of internet capacity being used
by these unauthorised messages. I believe 2005 will see those that
have not invested in a service such as MessageLabs doing so, but
isn't it about time governments woke up to the billions of pounds
of internet capacity absorbed by spam, and the millions being spent
to keep the spam out?
IT leaders have the potential to grow in confidence in 2005. As
we gain more knowledge about our businesses and the environments in
which we operate, we can contribute to broader business direction.
With this may come a new challenge. No longer will it be seen as
surprising if the CIO contributes to overall business strategy;
indeed, there could be an expectation that this will be so.
And if there is this expectation, we must ensure that we deliver
at the strategic as well as operational level.
Ben Booth is chairman of the BCS Elite group and IT director
at research group Mori