I think that both CIOs and CISOs should have fair salaries when you consider the work they putting into something. Their jobs take a lot of knowledge and skills that not everyone has, hence why I think so many are paid highly to begin with. However, with that being said they shouldn't be paid a million dollars for their line of work either.
Although a look at Guidestar reported salaries might be of some help I'm not so sure it reflects reality. Since Guidestar is reporting non-profits, there's going to be some differences between real world profit companies and the non-profit world.
And leaping through all the data on Guidestar can be a challenge, searching for the companies, and then looking at the multi-page IRS reporting forms.
Without some real life data it's going to be hard to negotiate with employers for most folks. Do we need an "agent" like sports stars and celebrities to bargain for pay now?
History has proven that you don't need to be very technical to have a successful IT company. If anaything, they should be very dynamic and able to learn, adapt and see beyond the obvious.
Regarding salaries, it has to do with the market for the people that can fill that position. Think of a CFO-type employee, they can probably look for other jobs in Wall Street, big banks, etc, which have higher salaries than average.
The Techie vs Non-techie CIO debate is always a long and winding one. Bottomline though, i think the CIO job is indeed largely political because the CIO must learn tricks of getting funds from the CFO and convincing the whole C-team to accept change and implementation of new systems. The individual himself or herself must also have a good technical understanding of things to avoid being the clueless manager that always gets cheated.
Essentially I call it team-building, relationships and promoting the organization. The CIO is the IT strategist - developing the shared vision with other stakeholders. Then as you stated sets the tone and direction for the IT organization. But no one can do it alone - CIOs need talented and creative people around them as well to execute the vision. The CIO role itself should not be an operational role.
The skills set required for being a CIO has certainly changed. It seems these days, they don't only need to be in charge of the technical side of things, but have to be on top of the political side as well. Unfortunately, I've seen many CIO/CTO's end up having to do more politics than actual managing of technology. I get it, they have IT managers under them for that, but greatness tends to start from the top down.
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Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
The apartment and house sharing service, Airbnb, now requires members to verify their identities by demonstrating a presence on the web, and by either scanning a government ID or entering detailed personal details. Other enterprises should take a close look at Airbnb's verification policies.
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By now, you've most likely heard about the 3D-printed gun that Texas-based Defense Distributed demonstrated last week. But we haven't heard the last about the censorship war that began soon afterward.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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