Chief information officers in the private and public sector of Germany - how similar are they?

The similarities and differences of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the private and public sector is currently an under-researched field, even though it is clear that different organizational objectives and regulatory frameworks will leave their imprint on the tasks and focus of top It managers. By way of an online survey we investigate the situation of CIOs within the public and private sector of Germany. In the questionnaire, the focus was on four specific aspects of content: denomination, characteristics, tasks and organizational integration of the respective CIO. In order to characterize the function of a CIO, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) offers a dimension reducing process. to be able to examine what tasks a CIO typically perceives in the private sector (PRIV) versus public administration (PA) a cluster analysis is performed on the basis of factor scores. Three clusters were identified for the PA cohort while four different clusters could be found in the PRIV cohort. In order to identify characteristics of the CIO better with reference to the predominant tasks, characteristic personality profiles were assigned to each task cluster. The function of a CIO is well established in the German private sector, although the role of It has been changing in organizations lately. What in the private sector represents a largely closed process is available in public administration only as the beginning of a trend. The Office of the Federal Government Commissioner for Information technology, which corresponds to a CIO for Germany, was created only in 2007 and in some of the sixteen German states no similar role has been established to this day. Moreover, also the tasks of the CIO in public administration vary markedly. Comparing the results of the cluster analysis of the PRIV and PA cohorts, it becomes clear that the task profiles of CIOs in these sectors often differ significantly. Thus, although the group “Hands -on manager” for the PA and “Administrator” in the PRIV cohort, as well as “It architect with operational tasks” in the PA and “It architect” in the PRIV cohort show some similarities, the other profiles are not to be found in the respective other sector. The profile of the “It representative” is available only in the area of public administration and the profiles “It generalist” and “It service manager” are to be found only in the private sector. The characteristics of each group of It-managers and related findings are identified and explained in this paper. Refs 22. Figs 4. tables 4.