Chapter five - Organizational structure the support strategic initiative

IT roles and responsibilities

    Information technology is a relatively new functional area, having been around formally in most organizations only for about 40 years. Job titles, roles, and responsibilities often differ dramatically from organization to organization.

    Most organizations maintain positions such as chief executive officer(CEO), Chief Financial Officer(CFO), and Chief Operations Officer(COO) at the strategic level. Recently there are more IT related strategic position such as Chief Information Officer(CTO), Chief Security Officer(CSO), Chief Privacy Officer(CPO),and Chief Knowledge Officer(CKO).

Chief Information Officer (CIO)
CIO is responsible overseeing all uses of information technology and ensuring the uses of IT is related with business goal and objectives. CIO will report directly to the CEO. Under CIO there will be a manager who are conduct all the IT project to be on time and within budget. There will also have a loader so that the strategic vision of IT is in line with the company strategic vision.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
CTO is the person who responsible about the throughput, speed, accuracy and availability. The function of CTO are similar with CIO except the CIO have additional responsibility which is make sure IT are aligned with company strategic initiative.

Chief Security Officer (CSO)
CSO is like a policeman of the company's IT system. They are responsible to make sure that the IT system of the company are safe against attack from hackers and viruses. The employment of the CSO are being increased every year because of the number of hackers and viruses. Most CSO must have the ability to create a security system and also the ways to solve the attack and viruses.

Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)
CPO are responsible to ensure the ethical and legal use if information within an organization. Usually they are only dealing with the internal staff because only them are using the information. This position is the newest position is the newest position in IT. Many CPO employed are lawyers by training which enabling them to understand the often complex legal issue surrounding the use of information.

Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)
CKO are responsible in collecting, maintains and distributing the organization's knowledge. CKO also will create the system so that the information can stored easily and can be reuse knowledge. The CKO also make sure that all the employees are updated the organization.