What's a CIO?

Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. As information technology and systems have become more important, the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as a key contributor in formulating strategic goals ... Usually, a CIO proposes the information technology needed by an enterprise to achieve its goals and then works within a budget to implement the plan. The CIO role is also sometimes used interchangeably with the Chief Technology Officer role, although they may be slightly different ...

In 2007 a survey amongst CIOs by CIO magazine in the UK discovered that their top 10 concerns were: people leadership, managing budgets, business alignment, infrastructure refresh, security, compliance, resource management, managing customers, managing change and board politics.

Typically, a CIO is involved with analyzing and reworking existing business processes, with identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, with reshaping the enterprise's physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise's knowledge resources. Many CIOs head the enterprise's efforts to integrate the Internet into both its long-term strategy and its immediate business plans ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_information_officer