Speaking at the Government UK IT Summit, Glyn Evans, director of business solutions and IT at Birmingham City Council warned: "Unless IT people grasp the transformation agenda they will cease to exist as profession."He added: "As IT becomes more plug and play, the traditional technology roles are bound to diminish. We no longer do much system development - we buy it in - and as we get the standards developed we won't need to do systems integration to the same extent. The networks are pretty much plug and play, so what are we going to do as a profession?"

But Simon Norbury, director ICT, Westminster City Council, warned that not all CIOs will be up to the task.He told the conference: "One of the first tests of a CIO is stick them in front of a broken PC and see if they can fix it. If they can they aren't a CIO, they're a technical manager. The old skills of the technical manager are not what is required any more. It's having that ability to meet people, influence them and kick things off."He added: "We aren't about running tin anymore. What people should be doing is letting go of some of this basic stuff in terms of making that transformation. Our main focus has to change to where the council is going rather than worrying about particular [IT systems]."

Top tips for ambitious IT chiefs
- Empathy - understand the other person's perspective
- Understand the business
- Have some elevator conversations
- Communicate with everyone

Source: 1

Prashanth Rai