Jozefa Sobski agrees. As CIO of NSW Health, Sobski would be the first to agree that her technical knowledge is limited. Her real skill, she says, is in knowing what she does not know, and knowing whom to ask which important questions. Sobski believes that she was brought into the CIO role because of her broad management experience, and supervision of often complex and political entities. In addition she has valuable policy experience gained during her time working in the education sector.
A former high school history teacher, Sobski's undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Arts in English, which netted her honours from UNSW. After a stint working in policy advisory, Sobski became a TAFE principal. She also did a masters in Adult Education, which she says had a very strong industry focus. The masters, she says, equipped her with a "strong workplace reform focus that has been very valuable then and now, and helps [me] to understand how to achieve cultural change through business process reform". She also undertook an exchange program in Germany, exploring how business had used training to achieve reform. All of these efforts, she says, have served her well in her current CIO role, especially her experience on the IT user side when she was involved in developing business-focused IT strategic plans.
"I also have what many CIOs lack, and that is the ability to communicate at many levels and to be accessible, comprehensible and enhance the credibility of the CIO and increase the awareness of the priority of IT as a business enabler," she says. Technical training she admits has been "mostly learned on the job".
"I have come to an understanding of the elements of computing and telecommunications indirectly. I have never done a training course on technology. It is an area of ignorance for me, but not a barrier because conceptually I understand the issues. I read, I attend conferences, I listen and I learn on the job," Sobski says. "What I do is learn most from doing, listening, exchanging ideas and reading. There is no time for formalised courses with my workload."
Some CIOs, however, believe that formalised technology courses do offer enormous value if time permits. Frank Coogan is the CIO of George Weston Foods. Now 52, Coogan has a business studies degree from the College of Business Studies in Belfast, Northern Ireland. But he points to the three-year Master of Science in Information Science course he studied at the University of Technology, Sydney as his launch pad to CIOdom. "Prior to that I was in more junior, data processing management roles," he says. "The masters really was a springboard into the level that I'm in now. It was a combination of IT and business skills."
For all its merits, the three-year, part-time course did put pressure on Coogan and his home life. "Working and studying does put a load on the family. It's difficult to sustain all three," he says. "I was lucky as my family allowed me to dedicate time to work and study. The family supported me with that." That support continued through Coogan's MBA, which he attained through the University of Queensland. A lighter load than the masters, Coogan thought the MBA was important because he "wanted to be up to date with the business thinking". More recently, however, he has not pursued further courses, "partly because the older you get the lazier you get", he says.
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