GUEST ARTICLE BY:
What’s the Strategic Approach?
RAFAEL BLOOM Founder/Director, Salvatore Ltd
Of course IT matters – but today ‘Operational Technology’ is the paradigm that really matters. Building a strategic function for tech and data is different from having a Head of IT, who is typically there to make sure things work in the short term rather than to tell you what to do for the long term. IT is a technology function and is not designed to understand your organisation or serve its strategic requirements. However, not every organisation has the resources for a full-time Chief Technology Officer (CTO) either, leaving a gap that is often ignored in the hope it might go away. So, what are the practical steps you could be taking in the approach to the new year? Firstly, acknowledge that tech and data carry high stakes – the success or failure of a start-up, a new app, a marketing campaign, a product launch, a company merger or acquisition – so it is highly advisable to start creating a strategy today, if you don’t have one. And the single most important element that ties everything together is very simple: Trust. If your organisation is to be trustworthy then you should be able to trust your employees to use tech properly and ethically. For example, have you spoken to them about the impact of Generative AI like ChatGPT, Midjourney and other AI-powered tools? As these tools come into mainstream use, they come with risks attached. If we don’t engage with our teams about how to use AI responsibly and knowledgably then we introduce unknown risks into our organisation instead of empowering workers to embrace AI’s potential.
It’s sometimes easy to forget how data shapes our world, ironically because of how well-integrated technology has become into everything we do. Whether we are at work or at play, we have come to expect our many platforms and devices - and the services they bring us - to function effectively and in a way whereas many of the underlying technical layers are hidden from us. What can this tell us about the opportunities, risks, and implications for the legal landscape where data and tech are concerned? For example, when we open the YouTube App on the phone to authenticate something that is going on elsewhere, we click to confirm and magically the two apps talk to each other, and we continue on. What is going on underneath this near-instant ‘easy’ process is a wild landscape of different devices, Cloud infrastructure, databases, User Profiles, IDs, security credentials, legal agreements, permissions and licenses - but it happens so quickly that we barely think about it. If we want our organisations to exploit their full potential, dealing with this complicated intersection of technical infrastructure, data resources, people and processes is something that requires more than an ad-hoc approach. If we are building a strategy for 2024 and beyond, what are the key elements?
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