The IT Chauffeur drives to CIO Canada

In the June issue of Canadian CIO, editor Shane Schick interviews me about The IT Chauffeur.  I enjoyed having a chance to talk about what inspired me to write the book: the disconnect between CxOs and IT.

Here's the interview in the June issue of Canadian CIO: IT strategy, he wrote

Canadian CIO June 2013

What do you think the CEO should know about IT?

Have you ever wondered why there is a disconnect between IT and business in many organizations? Does it start at the top?  

Regardless of your position in any organization, can you explain how IT decisions get made?

Some business articles allude to a poor relationship between IT and other departments being a function of poor management.  Would this gap disappear if the C-suite had a better understanding of Information Technology?

What do you think the CEO or anyone at the C-suite should know about IT?  Here are my top items: 

• Clear understanding of how IT decisions should get made
• IT Governance
• How to integrate business and IT
• How to use the business case in IT and other divisions
• How project management methodologies for all divisions can make an organization more effective
• How data integrity is critical to the operation of the organization
• How to make the IT department's services efficient
• How to protect the organization from natural and man-made disasters 
• Why it's important to protect data
• Fundamental understanding of the cloud
• Basic understanding of big data and business intelligence
• Know that IT can be socially conscientious with green IT, and finally,
• How to undertake the development of an IT strategy

Recognizing that CxOs often don't understand IT as a starting point, I wanted to explore what the CxO should know about IT using a non-technical, easy-to-understand, conversational story. So have a read of the book The IT Chauffeur (Available at Amazon.com or at CreateSpace).

Ontario can't recover emails deleted by senior staff - Really?

In an article in this week's Globe and Mail, Ontario's Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, reported that senior staff members in the offices of both the Ontario energy minister and former premier Dalton McGuinty intentionally deleted emails about the cancellation of gas generating plants in Oakville and Mississauga. The Privacy Commissioner's report throws more gasoline on the fire of the political fallout from the gas generating plant cancellations.

The opposition, and for that matter many taxpayers, are up in arms over the deletion (read "cover-up") of senior staff emails regarding the cancellation of the gas generating plants.  Ann Cavoukian determined that senior Liberal staff in McGuinty's office broke the law by deleting all emails sent and received on this issue.

What concerns me more than the alleged cover-up is the idea that no one can recover the emails.  What happened to good old basic IT practices?  Most organizations that have email perform regular backups daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and then send the back-up off site for secure storage.  

Can no-one at the Government of Ontario request recovery of emails from a backup?  Any organization that has an important need for transparency and security must go beyond basic data backup for emails. These organizations have email archival systems.  Email archival captures and stores email separately from the normal day-to-day email.  This ensures that the organization's email is always available: users can't delete archived emails. It is always there, searchable for e-discovery purposes.

Is IT governance absent from the Ontario government? What about all their other mission critical systems?

If the Ontario Government can't recover the deleted email of its senior staff, I think Ontario has bigger problems than its gas plant cancellations or even its burgeoning debt!

Press Release - The IT Chauffeur

The IT Chauffeur

By: Dale Mills

“The IT Chauffeur is a must-read for any CEO seeking a better understanding of the role and power of IT as an operational and strategic enabler in their business enterprise.  Dale Mills’ approach delivers.”

Meg Beckel, CEO, Canadian Museum of Nature

“The IT Chauffeur is a roadmap that steers senior business leaders through the complex and always changing landscape of information management, governance and decision making.  The entertaining approach helps anyone at the C-level deal with complex issues of governance and management that can otherwise be quite dry.  This book is a valuable resource for the C-suite, exploring topical issues ranging from IT project management, governance and security to social media and crowdsourcing. Well written, entertaining and comprehensive.”

Patrick McCarthy, President & Chief Executive Officer, OMNI Health Care Ltd.

What The CxO Needs To Know About Information Technology

Joe, a former CIO, is helping out his neighbour who runs a limousine service by chauffeuring Bill, CEO of Resolute Enterprises, a medium-sized company that has been experiencing difficulties with its IT.  During their regular limousine trips, Bill and Joe discuss the problems and potential ways to improve the use of IT in his company.  Many topics arise in their discussions, from IT governance to mobile technologies, all explained in a non-technical, conversational mode, giving readers, regardless of their technical ability, a solid understanding of how to use technology more effectively in their organization. Through an easy, readable dialogue the reader is engaged in learning basic technology management principles.

What Drives Your IT?

The IT Chauffeur will help CEOs, C-suite, board members, vice presidents, directors and managers get value from their IT investments.  The story focuses on a medium-sized company, but the discussion is relevant to executives in organizations of any size.

Dale Mills has been in the IT business since he was a high school student — from punch cards to the cloud and everything in between. For nearly 30 years, he’s been a senior level IT executive in both the public and private sectors, using his training — as a Professional Engineer, Master of Business Administration, certified Project Management Professional, and certified ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors — to manage, guide and innovate.

The IT Chauffeur

By: Dale Mills

ISBN: 9781482508673

Price: $25.00

On Sale: May 27, 2013

For further information, please contact Dale S. Mills | 519-827-6393 | dalesmills@gmail.com

Available at Amazon or at CreateSpace

Welcome to The IT Chauffeur

I have often wondered why CEOs don't understand IT -- or the corollary, why doesn't IT understand CEOs?  Regardless of your position in any organization, can you explain how IT decisions get made?  More importantly, do you know if the right information technology decisions are being made? 

Using that as a starting point, I wanted to answer those questions and more, using a non-technical, easy-to-understand, conversational story.

The IT Chauffeur, available May 2013 on Amazon, is a business book answering the question "What drives your IT?” Written in a conversational, readable style, The IT Chauffeur provides the CxO with a solid understanding of how to use technology more effectively in any organization.

Let's get the CxOs and the CIO on the same page, speaking the same language and working together - using technology to find business solutions. That's what I hope to accomplish with my book and this blog.

To get started, you can read a sample chapter of The IT Chauffeur in one of my future posts.

Dale Mills