Mike WilliamsonThe power the CIO is given is taken from elsewhere in the organization.
One of the subtle harms of the resulting central IT model is that it strips the rest of the org of its digital capacity.
Teams with some digital literacy are vaguely aware that the time and attention of end users must be respected and the that adopting digital tools could/should alter/simplify their business process.
In a central IT environment, often teams have no digital literacy at all. They come with super prescriptive requests for ill-considered digital add-ons to their manual process. It takes some sophistication to build a digital service that doesn't impose on users and the sophistication is low.
Centralized teams are incentivized for project throughput and totally overwhelmed and never have time to do the exploration and education needed to make a sane digital service and end up building something ridiculous.
We're trapped in a cycle that can only be broken by getting digital skills into the business/program areas.