ICT professionals must take a lead in pursuing the digital agenda, as well as running their legacy estates. Failure to do this will mean that others will decide the future direction of ICT in their organisation.

This warning comes from the Society of IT Management in its latest briefing The digital agenda: what it means for Socitm’s members.

ICT professionals should be positioning themselves as leaders in promoting digital services, says Socitm If they do not, the risk is much greater that others will decide the future direction of ICT in their organisation.

The briefing suggests that the ‘legacy-heavy’ ICT estates Socitm members tend to be responsible for can make it a challenge to ‘be and do digital’, but advises that adopting modern approaches to digital service development will pay dividends.

It goes on to argue that the radar of Socitm members extends further than most in the technical and methodological aspects of the digital agenda. This makes them well placed to align with the business agendas of chief executives and service leadership teams, where ICT-enabled productivity enhancement and digital transformation of services portfolios are now the order of the day.

Socitm members should be in no doubt that the digital agenda will play out in their organisations, with digital technologies and methods helping deliver better services and better value for money. It is therefore vital that ICT strategies are developed to align with and support wider organisational business and digital strategies.

Allocating resources to evaluating digital methods and practices while maintaining business as usual services could be problematic for very lean or highly outsourced ICT operations. However, not to do so moves the centre of digital innovation away from the ICT department and may be a golden opportunity lost.

Answering the question: “Should Socitm members be ‘digital leaders’?” the briefing says that effective digital leadership will as likely rely upon personal influence, based upon reputation and networking skills, as upon hierarchical positional command and control mechanisms.

The digital agenda: what it means for Socitm’s members can be downloaded here.