Key differences between chief data officers vs. CIOs
CDOs and CIOs hold distinct roles in the tech-driven C-suite. Both roles are key to improving data collection and usage throughout the company.
CIOs have been instrumental in transforming the world from an analog state to a digital one by implementing the technology infrastructure that supports modern transactions and interactions.
That IT infrastructure has generated massive amounts of data. For example, the world created, captured, copied and consumed 123 zettabytes in 2023, with estimates rising to 182 zettabytes for 2025, according to a study published by Statista, a digital provider of statistical data, based in Hamburg, Germany.
That data helps company leaders make informed decisions about how to improve business operations and better understand customer needs. However, that immense amount of data is only a small part of the story.
The emergence of digital data, also known as big data, necessitated a new role within the enterprise: the chief data officer. The CDO role has proliferated since its creation in 2002. While the role's duties have expanded in the past two decades, the position remains focused on making sure that users possess the necessary data to generate valuable insights.
The CDO took on primary responsibility for a company's data-related duties from the chief information officer. In some organizations, the CIO is still responsible for the organization's data.
Today, the CIO still takes on some data-related responsibilities. The CIO also partners with the CDO to make sure that their company is using up-to-date IT infrastructure to generate, store, share and secure the data so that the data adheres to the CDO's standards.
Here's how to tell the differences between the CDO and the CIO, including each job's responsibilities and what metrics to use to define success for the two roles.
What are the CDO's technology responsibilities?
The chief data officer is responsible for the company's data strategy, including the management and governance of its data.
Many CDOs are in agreement about the role's core responsibilities. According to the "Chief Data Officer Survey 2024," published by Deloitte in November, 49% of respondents are prioritizing AI and generative AI implementation and usage, 42% of respondents cited priorities on building the business case for data investment, and 35% of respondents cited priorities like data governance and delivering insights and analytics.
When creating the organization's data strategy, the CDO must figure out how the company can use data to generate insights and help employees make better decisions.
In addition to making sure that the company can support the data and analytics capabilities required for employees to make data-driven decisions, the CDO must make sure that the company possesses the data to support automation technologies such as AI and machine learning systems.
As part of the role's data governance responsibilities, the CDO must establish rules for how the organization and its employees collect, store, use and share data so that the data usage adheres to any and all relevant laws and regulations in the countries where the company conducts business, as well as any external and internal guidelines and any ethical considerations that company leaders choose to adopt.
Similarly, the CDO establishes the rules that the company's employees must follow to make sure that the data used to generate insights and information meets the organization's quality and quantity standards. An example of quantity standards for an organization is if a healthcare organization is researching millennial patients with chronic illnesses and needs a certain amount of data to accurately represent that group.
CDOs often work with other tech stakeholders within the company to adopt frameworks to assist with this process, which will help users follow the company's data standards. CDOs also use these frameworks to measure enterprise compliance with the rules.
What are the CIO's technology responsibilities?
The CIO role is instrumental to an organization's successful data function, even if the company already employs a chief data officer to oversee data strategy, management and governance.
Moreover, some CIOs also oversee their company's CDO. For example, 23% of responding CDOs said they report to CIOs, according to the same Deloitte survey.
If an organization employs a CDO, the CIO's data responsibilities involve implementing the required technology to generate, store and transport the required data at the right time to the right users, whether humans or machines. The CIO must fulfill their data-related duties in ways that adhere to the CDO's established rules and guidelines.
The CIO's data-related responsibilities are in addition to longstanding IT tasks that are core components of the CIO's job. These tasks center on implementing, maintaining and managing the company's IT infrastructure, as well as helping to evolve the IT environment as enterprise goals shift.
For example, many CIOs are focusing on ensuring data availability and access to AI, creating a future-proof workforce, and mitigating potential risks associated with new technologies, according to Info-Tech Research Group's "CIO Priorities 2025" study, published in January.
Opportunities for CDO-CIO collaboration
Although the CDO and CIO have different technology domains, the two executives must work together to make sure that each person is able to meet their role's data-related responsibilities. More specifically, the CDO and CIO should collaborate to achieve the following goals:
- Identify the active software systems and digital technologies that collect data, and inventory the types of data collected.
- Design the required software, hardware and networking infrastructure to collect, store, secure and move data, based on the organization's data requirements.
- Determine the additional software systems and digital technologies needed to collect, store, secure and transport data in the future, based on the company's data strategy and its overall objectives for generating data-driven insights, products and services.
- Create and manage the implementation of any potential IT infrastructure in the most cost-effective manner.
- Create and support organizational goals around AI and generative AI, as both CDOs and CIOs are responsible for finding specific and useful ways to implement these data-hungry technologies for the benefit of the organization.
- Strategize how emerging technologies can produce more value-generating data initiatives.
6 metrics for measuring CDO-CIO success
CDOs and CIOs were historically measured on their technical and tactical performance. A CDO's evaluation might focus on data availability and data quality metrics, while a CIO's evaluation might focus on IT uptime and cost containment metrics.
However, more companies have moved to measure CDOs and CIOs on the value that they deliver through their initiatives. For example, to measure CDO and CIO performance, company leaders might select metrics focused on whether and by how much data initiatives brought improvements in the following areas:
- Customer satisfaction.
- Risk management.
- Employee engagement.
- Delivery on enterprise goals.
- Time to market.
- Revenue generation.
Mary K. Pratt is an award-winning freelance journalist with a focus on covering enterprise IT and cybersecurity management.
