CIO, Who's Your Boss?

For years, chief information officers have been trying to gain respect in the C-suite. That meant reporting to the leader of the agency or office in which he or she worked. That relationship was enshrined in the 1996 Clinger Cohen Act, which established the CIO position and required the chief to report to the head of the agency. Almost everyone ignored it. (The Obama administration, so far, has been the exception, with the Veterans Affairs Department putting a lot of stock in CIO Roger Baker and John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, elevating the agency's CIO to report directly to him.) But for the most part, it's been a struggle for the CIO to earn boardroom cred and move out from under the CFO's thumb.

Now there's more bad news for CIOs: A survey indicates that most top technology execs, including those in the private sector, report to the chief financial officer. According to the study, which was conducted by Gartner Inc. and the Financial Executives Research Foundation, 42 percent of CFOs and other top finance managers said the CIO reports to the them, and for those CFOs that didn't have the tech chief reporting to them, 53 percent said they would like it that way.

If you're a CIO who wants the leader's ear, there are more findings that will disappoint you. In organizations where the CIO does not report to the CFO, a third of CFOs insist they have a key role in recommending an investment in IT. That means in "75 percent of firms, the CFO plays a vital role in determining IT investment," the study noted.

Former CIO.com colleague Tom Wailgum, writing about the survey, makes a good point that this may be some wishful thinking on the CFOs' part. The Gartner/FERF survey only polled financial execs. In CIO.com's 2010 survey of CIOs, only 19 percent of CIOs said they reported to the CFO, with 43 percent saying the report to the chief executive officer, compared with 33 percent in the Gartner/FERF survey. Could there possibly be wishful thinking from both sides?

Still, it's clear many CFOs want authority over IT, which for any tech chief who wants to be part of strategic management decisions, that isn't encouraging.