THE PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS OF A CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN THAILAND

Information technology has become a vital part of people’s lives nowadays. Especially in the academic sector, which information is shared and used by different groups of people, e.g. students, researchers, faculty members, and administrative officers, it is crucial to have a personnel who can effectively manage various technological activities in a university. This inevitability has called for acquiring a Chief Information Officer (CIO) in most universities. Nonetheless, since managing information technology is quite new in Thai society, there is no rigid criterion of what characteristics the most suitable person should possess. Consequently, this research seeks to understand the basic roles and preferred qualifications for future developing an evaluation criterion when selecting a Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the public university sector in Thailand.

Based on the CIO council (Clinger-Cohen core competencies), an interview protocol was developed. A number of qualitative in-depth interviews with university executives responsible for the information technology division in 20 participating Thai public universities was carried out. The interview was done to explore roles and qualifications these executives desire from the CIO candidates. Two main qualifications were identified by the respondents, management skills (soft skills) and technical skills (hard skills). Even so, the respondents emphasized on the soft skills more than the hard skills. Two qualifications of soft skills were highlighted; (1) qualification in idea & basic attitude (know how to be) – mainly on qualification in policy, organization, leadership and management accordingly (2) qualification in knowledge and understanding in working steps and role (know what) – mainly on efficiently assessing of information technology, architecture/ management, electronic government/ electronic university, job confirmation/ purchasing & hiring accordingly.