Interesting article in the current issue of Information Week asking Where are the CIO's? The author reviewed 12 corporations and only 5 had the CIO listed as one of the top executives in the corporation. Only 42% of the Fortune companies have an Information Officer? Ok, that's not fair and clearly not a scientific research study. Still, one has to ponder the implications.

Didn't Nicholas Carr write about that in his book/article: "Does IT Matter"? This book, which started with his Harvard Business Review (May, 2003) article, must be the most villain-ized book for the IT professional. Unfortunately, it captures the general feeling for senior managers of large organizations, especially for those managers that have not taken a deep dive into the fundamentals of competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is the process of developing products, services, processes, and capabilities that give an organization a superior advantage over other organizations. For those of us that find safe harbor in the world of information technology may fool ourselves in thinking that we don?t have to worry about competing with other groups. Over the past five years, that has changed with the advent of outsourcing, overseas sourcing, consultants, contractors, and multiple business unit technology groups. Does this explain the absence of the Information Officer? More importantly, what implications does this have on our profession and employment opportunities?