Making IT Happen

Having a good network is a key asset of a CIO. Not that network - I mean your personal contacts. I'm a member of the Property IT Directors Forum, run by the indefatiguable Chris Lees at Calvis. 30 strong, it's members are the most senior person responsible for IT in almost all of the leading agents and property companies.

We get together from time to time, and if anyone has a question they can send it out and within an hour of two you'll have 10 responses. If you're a CIO and there's one of these in your sector, then join it! (and if there isn't, then start one)

We're planning to roll out a new fleet of laptops and desktops for everyone in the company. One of the key decisions is whether we deploy Office 2003 or Office 2007. (In fact XP / Vista was also a key decision but we quickly decided to stay on XP.)

I canvassed a wide group of other CIO contacts about what they had done or were planning to do. Of 8 responses, 3 were 'already done it', 1 was 'soon', and 4 were 'not this year'.

For the 3 that had done, main lessons were:
1 - training is key - train at the point of deployment, set people's own PC's up before the trainer leaves
2 - wait 6-12 months - still too glitchy (!!!)
3 - use the quick access toolbar in preference to the ribbon.

For the 'soon', interesting feature of approach was the plan to just do Outlook 2007, and to stick on 2003 version of Word, Excel etc

Main factors for the 'not this year' group were:
1 - trialled Vista - slow
2 - no busines case, major benefits
3 - no glory in it for IT (which sounds cynical but I don't think it is - put another way, glory somes from happy consumers)
4 - licencing

Main reason we are looking at it is integration with Sharepoint (we are heavy users of Sharepoint 2007) and general XML integration capabilities. Finally, here's the official MS top 10 benefits of Word 2007 - a lot of which will apply to any of the family - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101650321033.aspx

Went to an excellent update meeting this morning run by Cordless Group - This covered the overlap between technology, work and people. Neil Salton their (deep breath) Senior Technology Visioning Consultant gave an excellent talk based on his experiences of attending some of the big Euro tech shows like Cebit.

There is an incredible array of new stuff out there. I tapped notes into my Blackberry and at the end had come up with: "Team communications, ms ocs, e.g. web conf group instant messaging, better phones eg wifi, share point, public instant messaging , virtual Margaret, 3d, display technology, multi screen, web cams, blu ray, oled, 3d, blu casting, styles of collaboration, better use of tech, short throw projectors, ultra mobile pc, data input, tablets, asus ultra mobile, giraffe pc, independent docking stations, face recognition, printing eg printstick, run own reprographics inc binding and stapling, rfid, active rfid tags, changing networks, use of mobile data, iphone corporate, smartphone interfaces symbian interface, google, iphone, windows mobile, femtocell at home"

A few priorities for my company: multiple screens, desktop video conferencing, Microsoft OCS, corporate iphone. (No great corporate benefits for the iPhone but I may apply Burstows CIO law - that user satisfaction rises at the square of the rate of distribution of shiny new trinkets).

I haven't done any entries for a while as my job has changed and I have been waiting for the dust to settle. I'm now Corporate Development Director at Telereal, responsible for growing our services business and account managing BT, who are our largest customer (accounting for more than 90%+ of our turnover).

I'm still responsible for IT on our Executive Committee, but now have in place a Head of IS. I've agreed with the team at Computer Weekly to carry on the blog, as I'm in a fairly unusual position of being able to look across IT and the rest of the business from two different viewpoints.

Already I'm...changing. I've now got my own marketing projects that have IT components to them, and so, like marketing teams the world over, I want stuff done yesterday...

Fascinating story in Computing last week about the creation within the US Air Force of Afcyber - a 30,000 strong 'army' for cyber warfare.

The article goes on to mention that there is no military equivalent in the UK. I find this surprising. I remember attending a lecture by Major General Sir Laurence New who described his role commanding a tank division (or other military grouping - not sure what Major Generals command in the hierarchy of things) in West Germany in the 1980's. Someone asked him what the most important part of his job was and he responded "readiness". He went on to elaborate that with how ever many soviet divisions just across the border, his troops had to be constantly ready to meet the threat.

Do we have the same level of readiness to meet cyber equivalent of the wave of soviet tanks? I'm thinking of theose military comparison maps with numbers of tanks, planes, ships etc - how would we fare in the equivalent cyber warfare resources map?

Our new website went live recently. It is very simple, and we're all very happy with it.

However, we almost ended up with a website that no-one really liked. Main lesson learned? Don't design by committee.

Design is one of those professional areas where it always strikes me that there are low barriers to entry - everyone has an opinion. People who wouldn't presume to tell a brain surgeon how to do her job will expound at length on their ideas on web design.

Hannah, our excellent web designer, was pulling her hair out with contradictory guidance from everyone involved. Hannah came up with an initial version of the website that responded to everyone's every design input, and it met every requirement. When I discussed it with Hannah I found it had a subtle flaw - she didn't like it.

An hour of scribbling later and we'd come up with a functional structure we liked, and a week later Hannah produced a prototype of the new site which everyone thought was a knockout. I then spent a day editing all the text into digestable chunks (someone had to do it) and you can see the results.

Interesting article in today's FT on red tape.

It refers to four examples picked from more than 280 'deregulation' measures. What's interesting is that three of them - on-line risk assessments, sending information to shareholders by e-mail, and lodging planning applications on-line - don't really cut red tape, they automate it. Nothing wrong with that, if it makes things more efficient, but I'm not sure it counts as deregulation.

Our new website project has thrown us into a fundamental question about Telereal - what do we actually do? A lot of people have been asked and a lot of answers received - but at the end of the day this has needed to be boiled down into some pithy text, which has caused a lot of debate. Much headscratching has revealed we are an investment and services company. Seems obvious looking back.

One of the projects I'm planning to follow in the blog is our new website. There are a number of drivers for this project - the main ones are that our business is evolving, and that the current site is looking ever more 2004, and doesn't provide things that we need.

If you have any comments on the current site I'd be pleased to hear them - www.telereal.com . Many thanks.

This has appeared in much of the computer press. I'm sure this would be an absolutely fascinating job. One of my colleagues notes that all cv's go to Hotmail, so Microsoft will get to know the candidate pool even before MI6 do...

MI6 searches for a new CIO

Who will be the spy who loved IT?

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) is advertising for a new chief information officer, following the retirement of the previous IT leader.

The job advert from MI6 requests "an experienced manager of technological and commercial risk at a strategic level" to help defend the UK's security and economic interests overseas.

"Technology is a critical enabler of SIS's work in tackling 21st century challenges such as terrorism and regional instability," said the SIS.

"Like any world-class organisation the Service is continually adapting to change and our technology has to be ever more responsive, agile and resilient."

The successful candidate will be expected to grow strategic relationships with private sector partners

Applicants must be British citizens and will be required to obtain Developed Vetting clearance – the government's highest-level security check, allowing access to top secret documents.

Interested candidates should email their CV and a covering letter to CIOresponse@hotmail.com by 19 November, quoting reference 2810.