The 10 biggest issues IT faces today

CIOs have an overflowing docket, with numerous critical and complex issues dominating their time and attention.

Not surprisingly, capitalizing on AI tops the to-do list, as does building the right expectations, security, and trust around it. Managing change is also vital for CIOs today.

Whether and to what extent these and other big issues impact any given CIO depend on various factors, such as the size of the IT department, the size of the organization, the industry, and so on. But there’s no question that they affect a significant number of IT execs seeking to deliver business value with IT in the year ahead.

With that in mind, here is a look at what researchers, consultants, and CIOs say are among the biggest issues IT leaders are dealing with right now.

1. Seizing on AI — and being smart about it

AI has been a means for enterprise innovation, automation, and competitive edge for years now, but it shot up the IT priority list after ChatGPT and the current crop of AI tools — generative AI, in particular — hit the market. That has brought more specific AI-related issues to the surface at a wider range of organizations.

One of the most-pressing issues among those: Seizing on AI capabilities, not just for fear of missing out but to truly deliver value.

“Not every organization has the same opportunities in the very-near term to apply AI in a way that materially changes their business model. But everybody is worried about it, and they’re wondering how it will improve productivity, market research, and decision-making quality,” says Jeff Stovall, CIO of Abt Global, noting that he is working with his executive colleagues to identify the best business cases for AI at his company.

Diane Carco, president and CEO of management consulting company Swingtide and a former CIO, says she sees this issue across organizations.

“Others in the C-suite look to the CIO to make sense of AI, application providers are marketing AI techniques — whether warranted or not — with religious fanaticism, and employees are exploring generative AI tools without guidance,” she says. “The CIO is playing catch-up. Internal education, including self-education, is imperative.”

2. Setting realistic expectations for AI

CIOs say they’re also spending significant time setting realistic expectations of AI’s capabilities — a tough challenge given all the hype.

“There is a general perception that AI and genAI can solve all manners of problems,” says Stovall, a Society for Information Management national board member and DEI Committee lead for SIM. “It’s not a general-purpose tool to accomplish everything.”

He points to one use case within his organization that illustrates the need for CIOs to set realistic expectations as workers look to AI to solve more of their workplace pain points. His company is using AI to write proposals, with AI providing significant productivity gains around this task. But he also educated colleagues on the technology’s potential for inaccuracies and outright fabrications — known as hallucinations, stressing the need for strong human oversight and quality assurance to maximize the value of AI and control for risks.

“AI doesn’t do everything well, and you cannot at this stage utilize AI to completely replace the human element; it’s a human augmentation tool,” Stovall says.

3. Creating secure, trustworthy AI

Despite AI’s limitations, organizations are forging ahead with their AI initiatives. And as is the case with all technology deployments, AI projects have CIOs and their teams evaluating capabilities, integrating them into the IT infrastructure, and customizing when needed.

But they’re also spending a lot of energy understanding the unique risks that AI presents, how to educate others on them and how they, as tech leaders, can counteract fears.

Anthony Moisant, CIO and chief security officer at Indeed, a job matching and hiring platform, says the CIO’s task here is to create secure, trustworthy, and responsible AI. “It’s how do we make sure that this incredible transformative technology doesn’t create pain down the line,” he explains.

4. Tightening data security

All the work around AI has further highlighted the value of data — for the organizations and hackers alike. That, along with the ever-increasing sophistication of the bad actors and the consequences of suffering an attack, has turned up the heat on CIOs.

“Indications are that hackers/ransomware agents are becoming more aggressive. At the same time, operations and decision-making are increasingly dependent on data availability and accuracy. Meanwhile, the perimeter of exposure widens as remote workers and connected devices proliferate. This is an arms race, and the CIO must lead the charge by implementing better tools and training,” Carco says.

5. Keeping up with ever-accelerating pace of change

Professional services firm Deloitte polled 211 US-based CIOs and technology leaders in February 2024 and found that one of the top priorities for CIOs is staying ahead of emerging technologies and solutions.

“The pace of change is increasing, and being able to stay ahead of that is challenging,” says Lou DiLorenzo Jr., principal and national US CIO program leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP as well as the firm’s AI and data strategy practice leader.

DiLorenzo acknowledges that CIOs have always had to keep up with new tech — it’s a big part of the job. And its rapid evolvement is not necessarily new, either.

“But it does feel different now; the velocity feels different,” he says, pointing to the exponentially fast maturation of genAI as case in point. “The continued evolution of capabilities and who is providing those capabilities and the people enabling them are changing more dramatically than I’ve seen in the past.”

Consequently, CIOs will need to reassess providers more often and more quickly, too, all of which requires more orchestration.

“It requires a different level of appreciation for ‘optionality’ in the IT architecture,” DiLorenzo says. There’s a need for more flexibility and modularity, with more components that won’t be kept for long stretches.

6. Managing vendors for today’s environment

Swingtide’s Carco sees a related issue that many CIOs face today, which is effectively managing vendors as the number of providers within the IT function dramatically grows.

“CIOs are coming to recognize that an organization built for internal operations is not well-suited to managing dozens or hundreds of external providers, and the proliferation of contractual obligations can be overwhelming. In case of emergency, knowing who has your data, what their contractual obligations are to safeguard it, and how they are performing has become extremely difficult,” Carco says.

Those challenges have leading CIOs looking to beef up their vendor management practices, moving vendor management from “a side job for technical resources” to a true discipline with a clarity of roles.

7. Implementing security as quickly as the tech

Ricki Koinig, CIO of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources, says one of the most significant issues she faces today is “delivering more and more projects while ensuring that security in those projects is fully funded and supported.”

She says CIOs like her often have to ask whether to speed up implementation of security practices or rein in delivery so security can keep up.

That’s prompting a bit of introspection, saying there’s a need to ask: “What’s hindering this, and how can we find opportunities to move forward?”

Koinig brings up some challenging dynamics on this front.

“Most organizations do not see their IT departments as solely cybersecurity units, but rather IT delivery and support departments. This means delivering more with less time and money is often seen as the true success measure of your organization’s IT department. Security practices may be seen at best as simply expected and at least as time consuming delays to project delivery,” she says.

She continues: “Relentless conversations and campaigning for the importance of funding and allowing time for security activities within projects may fall flat of expectations, therefore rethinking approaches in your organization might be helpful. The art is always to steadfastly balance efforts between delivery expectations and growing security requirements.”

8. Identifying, communicating, and delivering value

A majority of chief executives see tech as not just supporting their business but part and parcel of it. According to Deloitte, 57% of CEOs plan to embed new technologies in their business models to find opportunities for growth.

Moisant says CIOs are responding by adopting product mindsets and identifying tech-enabled opportunities that deliver disruptive, not only incremental, value. The goal, he explains, is “disrupting ourselves by creating new, foundational values using technology.”

That puts more pressure on CIOs to recognize where and how technology can produce value to the business and to effectively communicate that vision, DiLorenzo says.

“CIOs need to translate what they do and why it matters to their company and their customers in a really compelling way,” he adds.

9. Watching the IT spend

CIOs aren’t only thinking of the economics of their innovation efforts: They remain focused on the economics of their overall IT spend.

Abt Global’s Stovall, for one, says he is “being very cautious and conservative” with his IT investments, noting a general sense of uncertainty about what’s ahead is driving his approach.

He’s not alone in this thinking.

Indeed’s Moisant says he has become more attentive to finding efficiencies and wringing out some of the complexities that were added during the strong growth and investment cycle that happened over the past several years.

Carco says she sees many CIOs taking similar approaches, adding that CIOs face a big challenge in this area.

“Technology continues to permeate business more deeply. IT has surged past being a helpful driver of productivity; it increasingly saturates all functions of the organization, including its relationship with customers,” she says. “Managing IT spend is increasingly difficult and requires cleanup of old technologies and relationships to ensure money is not wasted. This legacy cleanup now needs dedicated resources.”

10. Attracting and retaining talent

Attracting and retaining talent has long been a top issue for CIOs, yet Larry Bonfante, founder and CEO of CIO Bench Coach, says it not only continues to be an area of intense work but one that could become even more critical.

“It has always been an issue, but it’s exponentially more challenging and complex now,” he says.

There are two major reasons why, he says. First, baby boomers will be leaving the workforce in higher numbers in upcoming years with fewer younger workers to replace them. Second, today’s workers have different ideas on how, where, and when work should get done. For example, a growing number of people are opting out of traditional full-time positions and instead working as contract, or “gig,” workers. And many expect to have flexible hours and remote work options with some in-office opportunities.

“You have this confluence of issues coming together,” he says.

These dynamics mean CIOs must adapt their recruitment and retention strategies if they want to draw in and keep talent, Bonfante says.

“The smart leaders are creating a hybrid environment, so there’s enough human interaction but there’s still flexibility and autonomy,” he says, noting that savvy execs work to create schedules that work for each individual rather than have a one-size-fits-all policy.

Top CIOs take that same approach to retention strategies, tailoring training and advancement opportunities that incorporate individual worker’s career ambitions — and not just the organization’s own needs.

“Today you have to think about making each employee the best version of themselves,” he says. Yes, they may still leave for another job, but they’ll also be more likely to recommend the organization to colleagues looking for new jobs.

On a related note, those workforce dynamics coupled with the rapid adoption of new technologies such as AI have many CIOs working out how they can quickly reskill workers to handle emerging tasks — and how to reskill workers at scale, not just within IT but across the organization.

“CIOs are being asked to increase the tech fluency for the entire organization because technology is letting work be done differently. Processes are changing and decisions are being made differently because of technology. There is a chance to operate differently, and CIOs need to help bring employees along and help them learn and grow,” DiLorenzo adds.