State of the CIO

State of the CIO is an interview show hosted by Dan Kelly, built on a premise stated in its cold open: talking with America's top IT leaders about the changing role of technology in the C-suite. The guest list is broader than the title suggests. Alongside sitting CIOs from Winnebago Industries and Symphony Care Network, Kelly talks with chief innovation officers from Spirian and Hitachi Vantara, an advisor to CIOs, and a cybersecurity specialist whose work has ranged from Fortune 500 companies and international banks to the CIA. Kelly works to a routine. He says he always starts by setting out the key topics and a little of the guest's background, and in one conversation he asks his guest to explain penetration testing for listeners before they discuss whether it is worth doing. The edges stay relaxed, with small talk about the weather or laughs shared before the record button. Nathan Taylor describes how, after more than twenty years of work, a healthcare provider still struggles to exchange data with large healthcare networks, even though banking handles the same thing with no problem. He calls HL7 a standard that lacked standardization, since a lab value could arrive as a number, a percentage, a symbol or plain text, and his answer turns toward APIs becoming easier to develop. Sri Koneru agrees with Kelly's soapbox argument that an IT organization without people who can speak business is bound to fail, and he credits his own path to the culture he absorbed early in his career at Target. Privacy and security come up more than once. Gabe Gumbs points out that a PhD in data privacy is 'not a thing', so organizations waiting for the field and its people to mature will be left behind. He adds that cloud and machine learning, both built on large volumes of data, need protection that goes beyond deciding who can access the cloud. Dr. Eric Cole explains a penetration test as a full-scale simulated attack launched from little more than a domain name or a business card. Then he says plainly that he does not recommend them, and he admits that a lot of security people do not like him. Data is another thread. Bill Schmarzo explains why his title reads Chief Innovation Officer rather than Chief Information Officer, arguing that most organizations treat data as a cost to minimize instead of a source of innovation. He traces his passion for analytics to teenage games of Strat-O-Matic baseball, where knowing the stats gave him an unfair advantage over the neighborhood. Brian Watson, a principal at CIO Clarities Advisors Company and a contributing co-author of Confessions of a Successful CIO, looks back to a period that began almost a year earlier, when nobody knew when it would be over, and at the tech companies emerging as trusted partners. Episodes close with Kelly inviting feedback and asking listeners to share the show with one person who would enjoy it. The result is frank, specific talk from people who run or advise on enterprise technology inside real organizations.