Analyzing Differences Between Public and Private Sector Information Resource Management

The office of the Chief Information Officer is still new within public sector organizations. Further, the office of the CIO was hastily created by Federal laws that provide only broad direction for its implementation and practice while at the same time limiting each office's power and reach within Federal agencies. Presently, because of broadly defined scope and the newness of the office in the public sector, Federal CIOs now face many challenges and critical technologies in managing their agency's information resources. Private sector organizations have a valuable knowledge base from their CIO office implementation efforts and subsequent operations. This private sector knowledge could offer public sector CIOs invaluable insight into successful information resource management practices. However, public and private managers must take great care in deciphering which IRM prescriptions are relevant to their organizational situation. The goal of this research is to discover if public and private sector CIOs are faced with the same challenges and view the same technologies as critical for their organization's operations. The results of an annual survey of public sector CIOs and senior IRM managers are compared with data collected from FORTUNE 1000 CIOs using the same instrument. Findings from this study provide evidence that public and private sector CIOs do perceive to be faced with many of the same challenges and also view many of the same technologies as critical to their organization's operations.