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Creating the IT Community: A Call to Action in a Time of Despair
by Stuart Robbins
Founder, The CIO Collective
(This editorial was published in the November 2001 issue of
the Ziff Davis Media publication CIO Insight.)
I was in Washington on September 11 when the planes came down,
in meetings with my IT colleagues at the World Bank, not far from
the Pentagon.
The Bank was quickly evacuated and I hurried to my Capitol Hill
hotel, on foot, armed soldiers shepherding thousands of us through
the gridlocked streets with the distant and unforgettable odor
of American Airlines flight 11 in the air. It was sadly profound,
an angry and precious time for us all.
What can one man do, in the face of such tragedy? What can one
profession do, in the wake of such horrible consequences? What
can one essay do in a time of despair for an entire nation?
We can and must do what we do best: we can be role models for
our managers, system analysts, and database engineers by creating
an IT community for them, a community in which the cooperative
- not competitive - exchange of technical assistance and advice,
best practices and helpful hints, all of the excellence that exists
in our organizations, can be offered to the broader society of
IT professionals, and this begins with the CIOs.
In order for our systems to talk to each other, the people who
build them must talk to each other. We must do so, CIO to CIO,
in small forums and in large associations, in email and in collaboration
technologies, in conferences and by phone and in our offices -
it is time for the Chief Information Officers to begin a dialogue,
not about their own small, single-company problems, but about
how all of us can work together and address these momentous challenges
as a community:
- How can we assist those who have
lost data centers, critical infrastructure, communications
backbones, and network hubs? Sun, HP, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft
have demonstrated exceptional generosity - it is time for
CIOs, and the intelligence that we have about systems, to
join that effort, not just for victims in New York and Washington,
but for the international digital community.
- What can we do to strengthen
the discussion of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
at the national level? Many of us have crafted robust continuity
and recovery plans, and others have an urgent need to begin
them. It is time to exchange those plans, share our work with
everyone that needs it.
- Privacy and Network Security
will be jeopardized in myriad ways - rather than returning
to the Cold War approach to personal liberty, there are professionals
with broad expertise in these areas, expertise that can teach
our legislators and our corporate peers how to expand security
and surveillance without sacrificing the exceptional freedoms
that are now at such risk.
There are wonderful and cost-effective
knowledge-sharing programs at work in Africa. Those programs can
have the same profound impact in New York and DC. We, as CIOs,
can be the focal point for such an exchange, in which our systems
become the tools that enrich the qualities of life, not only in
our own devastated cities, but in the many countries around the
world that will surely be impacted by our recession and our war.
We can create a "digital multiplier" that bridges this widening
(digital) divide, at one of the most momentous times in our history
- technology serving to improve, rather than destroy.
In some cases, one might even argue that the collective international
community of Chief Information Officers and Chief Knowledge Officers
has the capacity to function more collaboratively, toward common
objectives, than our political counterparts in these distant countries.
If we can take what we learn in Asia and implement it in Harlem,
and if we can take what we learn in South Chicago and implement
it in Gambia, we can begin a sense of community, a community supported
by processes and technologies, an IT "community of communities."
This can be the CIO contribution to the battle that looms before
us.
If we do not leap this chasm of despair that has been visited
upon us (and is most awfully articulated by the empty space where
the Trade Center towers used to be), if we retreat into our frightened
company shells, we will be missing a grand historical opportunity
to extend the IT revolution at its most critical time (lest we
return to the 1950's and complete the retrenchment that has already
begun).
It is time when we must consider how we can help one another,
regardless of religious or corporate or competitive boundaries.
It is time to "walk the walk" of collaboration at the executive
level. It is time for the CIO of every institution to become a
citizen of the world by working together on issues of common concern
- from that perspective, there is a great deal of work we can
do.
It should begin as soon as you finish reading this sentence.…
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