The changing role of the CIO from a Finnish perspective

More than ever earlier than, expertise is changing the method firms and authorities businesses are managed – and the price of change is choosing up. The capability of the chief data officer (CIO) to anticipate, determine and purchase the acceptable ICT capabilities is a key ingredient in the success or failure of organisations in nations round the world, and Finland is not any exception. 

The core role of the CIO in Finland continues to be about guaranteeing an organisation has the ICT providers it wants. But the CIO’s space of ​​accountability is rapidly increasing past purely operational features. 

“The CIO role is becoming more of a business leadership role rather than just a master of technology,” says Jarkko Levasma, Finland’s authorities CIO. “We’re living in an increasingly digitised society, and our leaders need to know how to apply technology the right ways.”

Levasma works in the Ministry of Finance, the place his division is liable for total steerage and management for ICT in the public sector. This steerage and management extends to central and native authorities, and all the pieces in-between – and is completed via affect, moderately than direct management.

“We don’t have direct control over agencies and municipalities, who are very independent in their digitisation,” he says. “But we do have ways of influencing them, because we provide funding and information.”

This place offers Levasma a chook’s eye view on how IT leaders function in the public sector all through Finland. He additionally has first-hand expertise in engineering and administration roles in the personal sector. 

“The CIO role is changing very fast,” says Levasma. “One of the interesting things is to think about what is included in the term ‘CIO’. It used to have a certain meaning, but more recently, other roles have come up, such as chief digitisation officer, chief data officer and chief innovation officer. Many organisations no longer see the need for separate titles like these. After all, the responsibilities of these roles are already included in the CIO job function.”

Big adjustments forward

Levasma believes different huge adjustments are coming, too – and they’re of a completely different nature solely. In his view, now we have come to the finish of an period in digitisation, having finished all of the huge issues that have to be finished for an organisation, and utilizing ICT to help the fundamental providers and processes. Now, authorities, enterprise and IT leaders must concentrate on creating ecosystems of completely different organisations to offer higher providers for patrons and residents. Within the ecosystem data can circulate from organisation to organisation, so prospects don’t need to be requested for information all the time. The completely different gamers in an ecosystem can get the data from each other in a digital format.  

“This means we can also automate things for the customer – for example, you don’t have to apply for a certain service from a government agency,” says Levasma. “We probably know it’s you and that you need that service. We can help the citizen if we get the right information at the right time from some other player, but this requires a cooperative ecosystem.”

In this new period, CIOs will not focus simply on their very own organisations and prospects. They must take a look at the huge image and see themselves as half of an ecosystem. This represents a huge change in the CIO role, in addition to in digitisation on the whole. 

In some circumstances, the information being exchanged is open, which makes the course of a lot simpler. But for a lot of causes, not all information could be open. It may be private information that’s protected by information privateness regulation. In this case, the data must be anonymised. Or it could be any person else’s property, wherein case, some type of cost scheme must be devised for companions to trade data. 

“Of course, this concept of data exchange in an ecosystem is not just limited to Finland,” says Levasma. “A lot of new EU legislation is coming out now to address how these exchanges will work across Europe.”

Much of the new laws was developed in the context of The European strategy for data, which was printed in February 2020 by the European Commission. Part of the technique is to extend the use of industrial information, with out breaking any European guidelines round information safety. All this information-sharing locations extra accountability on the shoulders of CIOs throughout the European Union.

Even although the scope of the role continues to increase, thus far, the path to turning into a CIO hasn’t modified a lot. It nonetheless requires a lot of technical data and expertise. Levasma, for instance, bought a grasp’s diploma in software program engineering earlier than beginning his profession in a analysis organisation. He then went on to develop software program in the personal sector for TietoEnator, the place he moved into a collection of administration positions. Since 2009, he has labored in the public sector in several direct roles, together with CIO. 

While the method into the CIO role hasn’t modified a lot, what has modified is how nicely a particular person does as soon as they change into one. Those who do the greatest are aligned with the total organisational technique, and this implies working with enterprise leaders in the personal sector, and company heads in the public sector. 

As managing associate of Momentous, a firm that gives government recruitment and HR consulting to huge Finnish and worldwide firms working in Finland, Mika Rossi sees the adjustments in the CIO profession path each day. 

“Typically, the CIO has an ICT degree and starts out in a few specialist roles,” he says. “Then they become head of a unit and so on. The standard career path remains much the same. However, career paths can differ in how motivated a person is to work with business leaders. A person who is motivated along those lines usually gets bigger roles.”  

“Because CIOs are now doing much of the buying or subscribing, they need to be good at finance – maybe through studies or maybe through experience,” says Rossi. 

Remote and hybrid working makes the CIO role more difficult, as a result of the CIO has to offer the digital instruments to allow the new capabilities. But in some ways, distant and hybrid working is extra of a bonus than a drawback for Finnish CIOs. It permits them to rent individuals who stay far-off from the most important workplace. Finland is a sparsely populated nation, so it helps a lot to have the ability to rent somebody from Northern Finland moderately than solely taking individuals who stay in the capital space, the place it’s fairly costly. 

“Personally, I have not seen any real problems with remote or hybrid working,” says Levasma. “The employees know what they can do from a home office. That’s true at least with the experts I’m used to working with. They are quite good at evaluating what kind of jobs they can do remotely and what they need to do in the office.”

Rossi says there’s one other world development that impacts the CIO role: an rising quantity of safety threats and a rising stage of sophistication. “It’s generally estimated that the situation will continue for a long time, which points to the continuing importance of information security in enterprises,” he says.

To meet this problem, CIOs must both be taught extra about cyber safety themselves, or delegate that activity to any person on their workers. Sometimes, the particular person is given the title chief data safety officer, who normally experiences to the CIO. 

As to the place the CIO experiences in an organisation, that relies upon largely on the trade – and on the nature of the firm. In circumstances the place a firm’s most important line of income comes from offering expertise providers, the CIO is prone to report on to the CEO. Or there could also be a separate chief expertise officer (CTO) role to handle the expertise that permits completely different income streams – wherein case, the CIO might report back to the CTO, or vice-versa. 

Some CEOs wish to guarantee digital transformation occurs extra rapidly and extra completely. In these circumstances, the CIO may report on to the CEO. “Different organisations have different dynamics,” says Rossi. “It’s only natural that in different organisations, the CIO has different positions in the management hierarchy, sometimes reporting to the CEO, and sometimes to the COO [chief operating officer] or CFO [chief financial officer].”

Where one goes from the CIO role can be changing, with the rising significance of expertise. There are examples of CIOs turning into the director normal or CEO of the organisation, particularly in organisations which can be notably information processing-oriented. For instance, Markku Heikura, director normal of the Finnish Tax Administration, is an engineer by coaching, and has a lengthy historical past of CIO roles. 

Another good transfer from the CIO role is to enter consulting later in a profession. But to change into a credible advisor, an IT chief first wants to achieve a lot of good expertise as a CIO, and develop a good popularity amongst their friends. A extra widespread profession path is to change into CIO of progressively greater organisations till retirement. Of course, in Finland, there isn’t as a lot headroom as in different nations. The most formidable IT leaders typically look outdoors the nation. 

With all the adjustments in expertise – and with the rising want for cyber safety – CIOs want extra experience of their workers. The workforce in Finland is subtle, and other people typically sustain with change. But now, IT leaders want people who find themselves forward of the curve on the newest expertise.

“It’s increasingly challenging to recruit talent, especially in areas where there is a shift in skill sets,” says Levasma. “It has always been difficult to find ICT architects, at least good ones. Security experts are also hard to find. And then of course there’s cloud artificial intelligence, and it’s really hard to get specialists in this kind of trendy area.”

As is true all over the place else in the world, the ability set required for expertise roles is changing quick in Finland. But Finland has extra challenges that include a small and stagnant inhabitants. Schools are struggling to maintain up with the tempo of change and the calls for of trade.

This leaves IT leaders with three choices. They can persuade folks with particular experience to to migrate to Finland, the place the chilly local weather is a huge turnoff; they will rent individuals who work from a dwelling workplace outdoors the nation; or they will compete with different firms for the small quantity of candidates on the market. 

Rossi says the greatest organisations give folks an thrilling place to work. They sustain with change. In normal, good firms discover good candidates.

“You must be quite flexible, because we now have several years of young people entering the work market from universities during or after the pandemic,” he says. “They don’t understand the old normal. They only know the new normal. If you want to keep them and flourish with them, you must listen to them.”