Published on the 19/05/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
While Australia has proved a laggard in terms of chief digital officer appointments, there are some signals that this may be changing…
Internationally one in 15 organisations has appointed a chief digital officer (CDO); in Australia the figure is a paltrier one in fifty. Given the role is intended to be akin to a chief strategy officer but with a digital flavour, the slow progress suggests Australian enterprises may find themselves overtaken by international competitors which move faster.
Even the Federal Government has failed to seize the CDO nettle. Although the Commission of Audit this year recommended a Federal CDO be appointed to provide guidance regarding the delivery of more e-Government services, last week’s budget failed to embrace the suggestion.
But there are signs of activity across multiple sectors; Brisbane for example became the second city in the world, after New York, to appoint a CDO, Kieran O’Hay back in 2012.
Fast moving consumer group Mars, retailer and property group Westfield and Deakin University have all appointed CDOs; and reports have emerged that Macquarie Bank has hired a former retail sector CIO as a CDO for one of its business units.
CIOs however aren’t always the favoured source of CDO talent.
According to technology analyst Gartner, the CDO role should more properly be thought of as an extension of the chief strategy officer role rather than a CIO-style role. Most CDOs also emerge from a different business background than CIOs with 35 percent having business strategy or marketing backgrounds. Just one in five has a technical background.
Damon Rees, who has been appointed as a chief digital officer at Macquarie Bank, has an IT background – but strong sectoral experience. According to his LinkedIn profile he started off as an application developer at Macquarie Bank before moving to Westpac for many years, and only latterly shifted sectors to Woolworths before taking on the new CDO position.
Gartner expects that the role will become more common over the next five years as organisations grapple with how to digitise their business strategy.
According to Gartner research director Andrew Rowsell Jones; “Whether your enterprise has a CDO or not (a role not yet common in Australia), we recommend that CIOs contribute to and, if necessary, lead the discussion about the implications of the ‘digital dragon’ on the enterprise.”
