CIO Essentials: Digital bubbles, IM security and tech skills crisis

Ever wondered what CIOs are reading on silicon.com? Our CIO Essentials feature puts you in the picture. Each week a leading IT chief picks his or her top stories from the past week and explains why they matter.

This week we hear from Steve Clarke, head of internal computing at AOL UK.

IM security unheard of among businesses
AOL have used IM for years. It's embedded deeply in the culture and it really works. Before arriving at AOL, I'd never used IM in a business context and only briefly on a personal level but now it's an essential tool and I'm an advocate for its use. I wish I'd had access to IM in other roles - it would have helped me be more effective.

Trusting third parties with one of the most critical customer interaction and revenue generating opportunities seems risky to me. The same goes for the IT helpdesk.

Recruitment crisis looms for UK tech industry
If companies were more imaginative about how they recruited people this would be less of a problem but, in particular, there seems little interest in recruiting people who will grow into a role. I've seen this strategy work well and providing the opportunity to step up and develop is probably incentive enough to join without needing a golden hello.

'Digital bubbles' and virtual reality - our world in five years
The idea of broadcasting my details to passers-by and having buildings telling me what is contained therein reminds me of Minority Report and it's not somewhere I want to go. Maybe I'm a Luddite but I value my privacy and I like the relative anonymity that being in public brings. I do agree about the memory stick but somehow I've got to stop losing them.

The silicon.com CIO50 2007

♦ CIO50: Who's on the list?
♦ The top 10 CIOs
♦ CIO50 analysis: How to be a top CIO
♦ CIO50: The full report

Techies lack communication and leadership skills
This has always been a problem and unfortunately 'soft' skills are the hardest to pick up if they're not already inherently present to some extent. The programme I'm currently running touches every part of the business and involves massive change, so good communications are essential. Every individual joining the programme has had to demonstrate good communication skills and to further enhance our capabilities we've got a communication specialist embedded in the team.

Offshore call centres more costly than in UK
This doesn't surprise me, I'm just amazed that it's taken so long to be realised. Trusting third parties with one of the most critical customer interaction and revenue generating opportunities seems risky to me. The same goes for the IT helpdesk. I've always viewed it as a central method for maintaining customer satisfaction in our whole service and since it's that important I want to own and actively manage that relationship, not pass it out to a third party.

If you are a UK-based IT director or CIO and would like to take part in the CIO Essentials series by choosing your top five stories of the week, send us an email here at silicon.com.