The COVID-19 crisis has changed things immeasurably for CIOs/CTOs.
One of the biggest shifts has been the explosion of remote work arrangements which tasked the CIO/CTO Office right off the bat – providing accessibility for now remote workers and then guaranteeing security and privacy for corporate information.
COVID-19 has manifested the need for redundancy and resilience – not just contingency planning (where IT is the key stakeholder) but exercise management of those contingency plans against several scenarios.
In an interview with CIO Tech Asia, Owen Prime, CTO/CISO at software security vendor – Noggin, said he hoped the “lessons learned won’t be forgotten”.
“CIOs/CTOs need to be advocates for digital transformation and crisis lifecycle preparedness going forward,” he said. “The non-tech C-suite has gotten a wake-up call and is making positive signals about accelerating digital transformation.”
According to Prime, the implication for CIOs/CTOs is that “they need to be ready to steward the transformation projects that are coming down the pike”.
“Those projects won’t just happen,” he said. “They need to be carefully considered and scoped. And even when they are greenlit, they need to be corralled and marshaled to finish on pre-approved time scales.”
Prime said the crisis has changed things immeasurably for CIOs/CTOs.
“One of the biggest shifts has been the explosion of remote work arrangements which tasked the CIO/CTO Office right off the bat – providing accessibility for now remote workers and then guaranteeing security and privacy for corporate information,” he said.
However the pandemic remains extremely fluid, so it’s doubtful that there will be a clean break from pandemic to post-pandemic even in countries where case numbers have fallen dramatically.
“We have a pandemic that in many respects shapes our new normal. But say, the pandemic ended tomorrow. I think CIOs have learned the need to have crisis and continuity tools to expedite efficient response and that’s what our Noggin product suite, in general, offers.”
Prime recommends CIOs:
- Prioritise digital transformation. A lot of healthcare processes are still manual and those processes thwart crisis preparedness, then slow you down during a crisis.
- Think integrated. IT systems in general are under attack from a fresh wave of cyber activity and the healthcare sector has been hit hard – having integrated systems that let you manage corporate crises and emergencies as well as security incidents in the same platform will be key.
- Be a stakeholder in supply chain management. We saw the limitations of lean supply chains for critical resources in this crisis. CIOs/CTOs might not be able to change supply-chain strategy alone, but they can be organisational leaders when it comes to supply chain visibility, which will help build resilience.
- Outsource to specialists, where you can. Finding the right specialists also helped us to streamline the communications systems in our modules, which has led to a marked improvement in delivery reliability, confidence and customer experience.
Prime said Noggin IT has come up with the the free Noggin Epidemic Response Modules — for businesses managing their corporate response to COVID-19. There’s also one for public health authorities and healthcare agencies.
“[These] – were created to help agencies and businesses respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by helping to protect staff, operations, and communities from the virus threat,” he said. “Each Module comprises a set of dashboards for organisations to prepare for, manage their response to, and recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Noggin IT has also partnered with PaaS company Twilio to raise the communications element of the modules, and enable businesses to effectively communicate with employees and suppliers.
The Healthcare Module includes dashboards to manage temporary clinics, beds, and test facilities, providing:
- Situational awareness for COVID-19 task forces, executives, and workers
- Case management of patients and affected workers
- Management of healthcare facility status, bed availability, capacity, and key stock (medicine, PPE, equipment, etc.)
- Situation reporting and requests for assistance or resources
- Dashboards for healthcare workers and facilities liaisons, to collect key status updates and data
- Best-practice plans and checklists to guide your response
Meanwhile, the Business Module encompasses business continuity, crisis management, travel risk management, and worker safety, helping businesses:
- Plan and manage their response with situational awareness, authoritative guidelines, maps, and facts, as well as best practice plans and checklists
- Prepare their workplace and protect people with worker health, welfare tracking, and case management, worker health surveillance, temperature reporting, and travel risk assessment for relaxation of restrictions
- Identify, assess, and manage the risks of disruption to supply chains, as well as track supply chain and supplier dependencies
- Manage potential infections with guidelines for positive worker tests, simple worker contact tracing, antibody screening results tracking, as well as worker case management and individual return to work plans.
“As you’d imagine, IT resources are badly stretched in most organisations – remember, the COVID-19 crisis has also accompanied a sharp rise in data breaches/cyber attacks,” said Prime. “It’s a rarity that CIOs can look at a single-source-of-truth dashboard and gain pretty instant situational awareness into a given crisis, as opposed to looking to multiple, often noisy sources with incomplete data trails.”
