usiness goals of the organization.
             How does a CIO 'contribute' in an organization
             In order to evaluate the performance of a CIO, it is necessary to understand the 'contribution' a CIO is expected to make in an organization. It would be fair to say that in a modern organization, the CIO's main contribution is in terms of 'creating' business opportunities for the organization by integrating the business model, business processes and physical and information resources of the company with innovative application of information technology. For all practical purpose, he is a key decision-maker along with the CEO, CFO or COO and his main objective is to enhance the business interests of the organization. As such it requires the CIO to take initiatives in order to make the IS department play a more proactive role in contributing towards the company's business goals rather than focussing only on the secondary function of providing "support" in terms of uptime and systems delivery.
             How to evaluate the performance of a CIO
             It is very difficult to have sound "quantitative and qualitative performance dimensions to evaluate a CIO"(1999, 12th April, http://www.msdev.com) or for that matter any upper management executive. There are so many "intangibles" (Koch, C., 1996, 15th February, CIO magazine) involved while trying to measure a professional's overall contribution to the company (not to mention the "tangible" factors) that it is very difficult to evolve a 'fail proof' scale to measure contribution of a professional in quantitative terms. "Traditional evaluation measures like downtime and systems delivery are being augmented by performance measures that are difficult to quantify anywhere but in the minds of the others sitting in the executive suite." (Koch, C., 1996, 15th February, CIO magazine). The best way to evaluate the p...