Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Responses were organized into three categories: responses of 8, 9, or 10 were catego-
rized as a “critical” rating; 5, 6, or 7 as “fairly important”; and £4 as “not important.” If a
respondent selected the “CA” response, his or her data for that attribute was not included
in the analysis, because CA is a valid response but cannot be assigned to the any of the
aforementioned three categories. If a respondent did not select the “CA” response and did
not rate the attribute using the 10-point scale, that respondent was excluded from the mean
calculation of that attribute for the associated CIO group.
IT Unit Size Contextual Setting
IT unit size relates to the number of staff employed by the agency's IT unit. The size
of the IT unit was used to segment the respondents into two groups. Respondents were asked
to self-select themselves into one group. One group is comprised of CIOs who manage an
IT unit staff of less than 30 (i.e., Small IT Unit). The other group is comprised of CIOs who
manage an IT unit staff of greater than or equal to 30 (i.e., Large IT Unit). One of the 41
respondents did not respond to this question. The two resulting “IT unit size” CIO groups
are presented below:
•
Small IT Unit Staff: <30 (
n
= 19)
•
Large IT Unit Staff: ³30 (
n
= 21)
Using the 10-point scale described above, a profile was developed for the large and small
IT unit CIO groups (Table 2). Each profile consists of those factors and activities within the
six dimensions of the competence framework that at least two-thirds (³67%) of the group
respondents rated critical (i.e., 8, 9, or 10). The results of the comparative analysis of the CIO
competence ratings for the “Small IT Unit” and “Large IT Unit” CIO groups are presented
next.
Critical Factors
As illustrated in Table 8.3e, the two groups are similar in terms of the number of factors
(i.e., business, human, and technical) that they feel are critical for them to focus on. For
example, across the three knowledge-based dimensions, a total of 13 factors emerged as
critical for the Small IT Unit CIO group to focus on, while 14 factors were critical for the Large
IT Unit CIO group. However, there are some differences across the two groups in terms of
the types of critical factors and the extent to which each group feels that a given factor is
critical (see percentages to the right of each critical factor listed).
Focus on Business Factors
Nine of the 12 business factors emerged as critical in the Small IT Unit CIO profile,
compared to eight in the Large IT Unit CIO profile. Six of the 12 business factors emerged as
critical in both of the IT unit size CIO profiles:
•
Agency mission
•
Agency objectives and goals
•
Agency policies
•
Agency resources
