Responsibilities of the CIO

  1. optimal title – Vice Chancellor for Information Technology
  2. scope of responsibility – IT infrastructure including servers used by more than one campus entity or on which sensitive, private, or confidential information is stored; data networks; email/calendaring & other campus-wide IT services; telephone/cable TV; all IT machine rooms, main and secondary distribution facilities, and data backup/recovery facilities; organizational resilience, disaster recovery and business continuity planning; and related help desktops.
  3. how the central enterprise is organized – Associate/Assistant Vice Chancellor positions that will head up the primary central IT operations, services, and support organizations.
  4. what areas fall within or outside the position's cone of influence. Should include ITD (except security and compliance), DELTA IT functions, ComTech, ETSS (except security and compliance), and College IT operations related to servers, network connectivity, and general desktop support. EADS and IT Security and Compliance functions should report to the CFO who has responsibility for assuring the university maintains a clean annual audit. (Note: if the college IT operations remain outside of the CIO’s operation, the Client Services unit of ETSS should continue to report to the CFO to continue to provide a similar level of desktop support to the administrative users.)
  5. where the position reports and/or participates in the senior hierarchy – report to the Chancellor as an Executive Officer.
  6. the resources that will need to be consolidated, diverted, or created for it to succeed. The decentralized budgets of the respective units noted above should be consolidated to form the base budget of the new IT organization.
  7. the oversight and/or advisory entities that might prove useful as IT moves in this direction. The University IT Committee should continue to serve as the primary IT advisory entity to the CIO. A renewed effort needs to be made to get the primary program representatives to attend and participate in the UIT Committee meetings. The CIO could become a member of the Administrative Systems Management Team.

Qualifications of the CIO – minimum of a bachelor’s degree in IT or business related discipline, advanced degree could be a preferred requirement.

  1. Management style – needs to have a participatory focus to management and be open to suggestions from both within her/his organization and from customers..
  2. Familiarity with environments like NC State's – 5 years experience in a senior IT role at a major research extensive university should be a minimum requirement.
  3. Whether particular kinds of IT expertise are necessary or desirable – Senior administrative role in an ERP based IT environment.
  4. Whether faculty or other non-IT experience is important – neither faculty experience nor other non-IT experience assures success as a CIO.
  5. Rhetorical competence – must be articulate in written and oral communication without using excessive technical jargon or academic double-speak.
  6. Willingness to commit for the necessary term – not a permitted qualification but it would be nice to have; however, it will be like a coach and only serve as a one-way commitment from the university and not the CIO. I would drop this item.