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Government plans to appoint a chief information officer (CIO) this year might be hindered by a lack of suitable candidates for the job, experts warned.
John Tsang Chun-wah,  Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, announced the creation of the CIO's position earlier this month as part of the 2004 Digital 21 Strategy.  
He said the CIO would provide strong leadership of a new bureau, created by the merging of the Information Technology Services Department  and the communications and technology branch  of the Commerce, Information and Technology Bureau.  
In the corporate world, the CIO is usually a board-level appointment who, unlike an IT manager, is responsible for taking a broad view of information technology deployment across the entire organisation rather than focusing on a particular department.
The role  allows  the CIO to take a more strategic view of operations, and spot opportunities for different departments to share IT resources.
 Dion Wiggins, research director at Gartner Hong Kong, said the appointment of a government CIO was a laudable idea.
 'Different departments have so much data that is not intertwined,' he said.
 A glaring example was the way the lack of shared information may have slowed progress in battling the Sars outbreak last year.  
The Hospital Authority  found that the police had a database of every street and building name in Hong Kong, including every possible translation, but the discovery was made only  late in the outbreak. Had this data been available earlier, it could have been invaluable in  tracking and controlling the spread of the virus, Mr Wiggins said.
 Charles Cox, vice-president and global leader for outsourcing company EDS'  government industry practice,  said  that in such a case the CIO would  have to work within the government, which  meant having an understanding of how different departments worked alongside each other within the bureaucracy.  
 'Someone who didn't understand government wouldn't be effective,' he said.
However,  while it would be a good idea to have someone who had worked in government holding the post, a career civil servant might not be accustomed to taking the broader strategic view required  of  a CIO, Mr Cox said.
 Although finding a suitable candidate could prove challenging,  the creation of the CIO position was  a good idea, especially with cost-cutting and the need to balance budgets being a government priority, he said.  
 A good CIO could help the government cut the budget deficit by the millions of dollars required  to balance the budget in the next few years, he said.
 When it came to outsourcing,  a CIO could help the government save much more than  it did under the present system,  in which each department looks at it own processes and systems and decides which ones it wants to outsource.
 'We want to get departments thinking about shared services, as there tends to be a lot of repetition in government,' he said. 
'For instance, does every department need its own finance department or human resources department?' 
 Lachlan Sloan, managing director of recruitment firm Wall Street, said the position of CIO was not  a common one in Asia. 
 Multinational organisations were more likely to have one, he said.
Government CIOs have already  proved their worth overseas; countries to have appointed the officer include  Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.  
Mr Wiggins said  countries with a CIO had clearly benefited from a more effective deployment of IT than countries that did not have one.  
Mr Sloan  said it was arguable whether the depth of experience required for the position was available in Hong Kong. 'You  are talking about  a handful of people  who can take on this role,'  he said.
  The person appointed to the position would have to be someone respected by Hong Kong's  IT sector, he added.



Finding a CIO could be a challenge