IT growing up?

The launch of the Innovation Value Institute potentially heralds a major step forward for the IT industry. Major technology and end user players such as BP, Microsoft, Sap, Intel, BP, Chevron, Ernst and  Young and Boston Consulting Group have got together to develop a framework for enhancing the value that IT delivers to the business.

This is an impressive objective, as from my perspective this is what the IT industry needs to address as job number one. There is too much vagueness around the IT department's responsibilities and associated KPIs.

Interestingly an IVI CIO survey revealed that:

• 67 percent of the average IT department's budget is spent just keeping the business running; another 20 percent is spent on enhancing existing capabilities, and only 13 percent is spent on "innovation."
• 75 percent of CIOs said that they would like to be in a better position to understand how IT is actually delivering value to the company
• Two thirds of CIOs don't believe most of the ROI numbers that are put in front of them
• Half of these CIOs don't actually measure value at all, since they're focused on just keeping the business running.

At the very least IVI will make it difficult to ignore the IT elephant that stalks the C-suite.

In my view decoupling of the CIO role from operational responsibilities will be a big step in addressing these embarrassing stats.