Evolution Of The Role of CIO Samples for Students †MyAssignmenthelp.c

Question: Discuss about the Evolution Of The Role of CIO. Answer: Role of CIO The Chief Information Officer is responsible for handling the IT services and the library of the University (People.unisa.edu.au 2017). The main focus of the CIO is on the strategy and vision of the University. CIO is responsible for making the correct and accurate information available to the right candidate at the right time in an efficient manner. Their aim is to improve the research and development methods and techniques in order to incorporate advanced technology in the IT environment of the University (Strand 2013). Proper utilization of IT will enable the University to achieve the strategic mission. The CIO is the facilitator in the essence. The CIO is the visionary of the University and thinks about the future growth and development of the University of South Australia. He is responsible for managing the strategy related to the information technology for supporting the objectives and goals of the University. The CIO is considered to be one of the key contributors of organizat ional strategy. The role of CIO rapidly is rapidly growing and evolving with the growth of digital technology in the University. The role of the CIO is innovative and collaborative in nature. He is also responsible for balancing the budget of the information technology and motivating the IT staffs. The CIO is said to report to the CEO of the University. The CIO approves annual investment plans regarding ICT support. They ensure that the ICT capital budgeting planning is properly integrated with the capital planning of other processes like research infrastructure. The CIO is also responsible for reviewing and approving ICT policies and strategies over time. They also take care of the technical support and management part of the University. They also look after the ICT related risks and challenges, and play a major role in planning for the disaster recovery of the information. Evolution of the role of CIO The role of CIO has evolved through the years. UniSA was founded in the year 1991. Initially there was the IT team whose main focus was on the hardware and software development and management in the University. With the emergence and growth of ICT, the role of CIO had been created. Initially there were information officers and MIS managers who used to handle all the IT related activities in the organization. They used to analyze and develop the systems that were to be used by the University staffs and employees. They were also responsible for training the staffs for making proper utilization of the systems in the University. The IT managers were highly skilled and experienced. Top management expectation from IT The top management of the University expects the IT staffs to be competent and highly skilled so that they are able to develop innovative and advanced technologies for delivering industry relevant experience for the students. They expect their students to develop and gain digital competencies that will help them to excel in the future. They expect their IT staffs to be digitally literate so that they are able to introduce advanced digital technologies in the teaching practices of the University. They expect their IT professionals to utilize the digital technologies in an effective and efficient manner. They expect to integrate digital innovations in the learning and teaching processes of the University. Continuous development in the field of IT is expected by the top management team. The main expectation from IT is not restricted to service and technology. It has extended to addition of business value by making use of IT enabler. The IT professionals are expected to be responsible an d loyal to the University. They must focus on developing new plans and strategies for the purpose of organizational development. The University will be able to achieve its objectives of becoming digitally competent by hiring efficient and well trained IT professionals. Influence of CIO The CIO of the University plays an influential role in the technological development of the organization. UniSA is well known for its innovation, smart planning as well as adaptability. This would not have been possible without the support of the CIO. The CIO is responsible for the IT related services in the University. The Horizon 2020 focuses on the future goals and objectives of the University (Unisa.edu.au 2017). Proper strategic planning and technical competencies of the CIO has led to the development and success of the online learning platform for UniSA. The University has been able to make the students digitally literate with the support of the CIO. The CIO has also played a significant role in developing a cloud strategy by maximum utilization of SaaS. The success of the Jeffrey Smart Building also shows the influence of the CIO in the IT development of the University. Performance of IT In the year 2009, UniSA had launched a personal online environment for the purpose of enabling the students to learn online. The name of the platform was learnonline. In the year 2014, this platform had become successful. It had 11 million registered students. This shows the performance of IT of the University of South Australia. It of UniSA has been able to blend the digital resources with the teaching practices of the University (Liebowitz and Frank 2016). The technical staffs with the guidance of the CIO are involved in further innovation and advancement of the online learning platform. The online platform facilitates the students with virtual classrooms, lecture recording, e-portfolio, Turnitin and the course outline and curriculum. The aim of this University is to deliver a digitally enriched platform for making the students digitally competent and professional. The UniSA mobile app has been recently released and it has been extremely helpful for the students. Weaknesses of IT The Cloud service model that is adopted by UniSA is the SaaS model. There are certain weaknesses involved in this IT infrastructure of the University. UniSA is dependent on the provider of SaaS (W3.unisa.edu.au 2017). There are high chances of loss of control. If the SaaS provider ever gets bankrupt then it will harm the students and the business continuity of the University. This cloud service cannot be availed without Internet connection. This makes UniSA dependent on Internet. Security issues are a major concern of SaaS service model (AlZain et al. 2012). If the server is down then the performance of SaaS will be low. The use of technology cloud has several disadvantages as discussed above (Jamsa 2012). The mobile app is susceptible to various security risks and threats. There is also lack of a smart university environment. IT Improvement Strategy UniSA can take certain steps for overcoming the issues faced due to its IT infrastructure. Adoption of high speed network connection can overcome the connectivity issues of the students and the staffs. While adopting a cloud service from a vendor, UniSA must ask about the application and infrastructure security provided by the vendor. Proper agreement must be made between UniSA and vendor. UniSA must know the correct location of its data (Kulkarni et al. 2012). A process cloud must be adopted by UniSA for designing, automating and managing business processes that are present in the cloud. A smart university environment can be built where the devices, doors and windows will be embedded with sensors, software and network connection (Tikhomirov and Dneprovskaya 2015). Process cloud will provide a design-time and runtime environment to UniSA. Challenges of the proposed strategy The process cloud is targeted mostly towards non IT authors and it has less configuration complexities but it sacrifices some capabilities like case management, advanced analytics and heavy integration. With the growth and development of ICT, the attackers are also finding new ways to access data and misuse it from mobile apps and cloud storage. IoT will be highly susceptible to virus attacks, phishing attacks and Trojan horses (Jing et al. 2014). Security issues remain a major challenge for the IT infrastructure of UniSA. References AlZain, M.A., Pardede, E., Soh, B. and Thom, J.A., 2012, January. Cloud computing security: from single to multi-clouds. InSystem Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on(pp. 5490-5499). IEEE. Jamsa, K., 2012.Cloud computing. Jones Bartlett Publishers. Jing, Q., Vasilakos, A.V., Wan, J., Lu, J. and Qiu, D., 2014. Security of the internet of things: Perspectives and challenges.Wireless Networks,20(8), pp.2481-2501. Kulkarni, G., Gambhir, J., Patil, T. and Dongare, A., 2012, June. A security aspects in cloud computing. InSoftware Engineering and Service Science (ICSESS), 2012 IEEE 3rd International Conference on(pp. 547-550). IEEE. Liebowitz, J. and Frank, M. eds., 2016.Knowledge management and e-learning. CRC press. People.unisa.edu.au., 2017.Paul Sherlock Home Page, University of South Australia. [online] Available at: https://people.unisa.edu.au/paul.sherlock [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017]. Strand, R., 2013. The chief officer of corporate social responsibility: A study of its presence in top management teams.Journal of Business Ethics,112(4), pp.721-734. Tikhomirov, V. and Dneprovskaya, N., 2015, April. Development of strategy for smart University. In2015 Open Education Global International Conference, Banff, Canada(pp. 22-24). Unisa.edu.au., 2017.Home - University of South Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.unisa.edu.au/ [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017]. W3.unisa.edu.au., 2017.Cloud Strategy. [online] Available at: https://w3.unisa.edu.au/ists/new/staff/strategy-policy/cloud.htm [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].