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Conclusion
But there is hope. The CIO at a midmarket pharmaceutical company has had great luck with a basic change. "We have moved from having no relationship five years ago to now having lawyers be part of project teams," he says. That approach is not only a good idea but also a way to push legal matters down to lower levels of the organization. As the fields of IT and law continue to move closer together, the CIO's responsibilities will move to a higher level. "I think the future is going to move more toward enterprise risk management, which is a consolidation of all the compliance and risk functions. CIOs will need to play a big part in such an organization and figure out how to establish appropriate governance frameworks to ensure IT is an integral part of such a structure and subsequent policy and process leadership," says the CIO at a major global manufacturer.
"Looking at risk across all elements of the business and building appropriate models to know where to invest, where to protect, etc., is the next frontier," he continues. "IT leadership needs to get in the front seat of this bus -- maybe not [as] the driver, but definitely [as] the co-pilot."
This role will in turn open up opportunities for new types of specialists. The soon-to-be CIO at a financial services company sees the need for a business analyst who bridges the gap between law and IT. "We need people who can translate legal to business issues in terms that real people can understand," he says.
At the end of the day, though, almost everyone knows that both risk and compliance are moving targets. A senior business executive at an energy company who presides over IT concludes, "We need to accept that the cost of full and total compliance is prohibitive, and so judgment around risk and benefit is required. Don't listen to the cries of the Chicken Little consultants and other ambulance chasers."
In Henry VI, Shakespeare writes, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." But this isn't an option, of course. What midmarket CIOs need to do is "skill" the lawyers -- that is, ensure that everyone who works with IT on legal issues understands the implications of decisions. They also need to upgrade their basic understanding of the law. Ultimately, as Shakespeare writes in Julius Caesar, the collision of IT and legal worlds has deep roots.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves."
SURVEY METHODOLOGY: Researchers contacted 130 companies (47% large firms, 53% midmarket firms) in 17 vertical markets, including banking, construction, consumer electronics, education, entertainment, fashion, food, government, insurance, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, philanthropy, publishing, retail, services, technology and telecom. Researchers conducted some follow-up interviews by e-mail.
Thornton May is a respected futurist, adviser and educator whose insights on IT strategy have appeared in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and numerous computer industry publications. To comment on this story, email editor@ciodecisions.com.
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