IT to go outside IT department, says Gartner

Dave Bailey, Computing, Monday 18 January 2010 at 16:58:00

Analyst says by 2011, 40 per cent of "IT staff" will have no IT experience

Analyst Gartner has predicted that "the future of IT lies outside the IT
department."

The reason for this is that over the next two years, business demand for
IT-driven growth and innovation will outstrip the supply of qualified people to
fulfil job roles resulting in traditional IT tasks moving outside the IT
department according to Gartner distinguished analyst Debra Logan.

She added: "CIOs are increasingly coming from the business and users are
taking control of their own information delivery infrastructure.?

The result, says Gartner, is that 40 per cent of people who report into IT in
a rigid, "matrixed" fashion, or directly, will have substantial business and
non-IT experience.

Gartner has identified four information management roles that IT departments
will need to create if their management and governance frameworks are to remain
effective:

• legal and IT hybrids


• digital archivists


• business information managers


• and enterprise information architects

The legal and IT hybrid post will add the role of litigation support manager
by 2010, according to Gartner. Other duties for these hybrids will be to create
policies and schedules, help design and execute discovery exercises for
regulators, and mediate between legal and IT departments.

Digital archivists will be expected to appraise, arrange and preserve digital
records for legal and regulatory purposes.

Logan also predicts an increasing trend towards employing business
information managers, who combine business and information management expertise
in a single role.

Enterprise information architects will normally be involved in creating
document templates and data models.

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2256300/gartner-outside-department