CIONET grant award to four top European digital leaders 

Amsterdam – June 26, 2017 -- CIONET International today announced the winners of the 2017 European Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Year Award.

These awards recognize the success of CIOs who have increased their organisation’s competitiveness by using information and communication technologies (ICT) to create significant business value.

For the eighth time in a row CIONET brought together a committee of experts to select three winners from a selection of 21 prominent finalists from 8 European countries. Judges selected the top three in the following categories, according to the scope of responsibility of the finalists: Public Sector, Medium-sized IT organisations (>150 FTE’s) and Large organisations (>150 FTEs).

The following CIOs earned this year’s award:

• Public Sector: ex aequo
  Markus Richter, CIO of Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Germany;
  Sarah Flannigan, former CIO of National Trust, currently CIO of EDF Energy, United Kingdom
• Medium-sized organisations: Maciej Buba, e-commerce IT Manager, Amrest, Poland;
• Large organisations: Ron Van Kemenade, CIO, ING, The Netherlands.

Selection criteria included examining how well CIOs adjusted their IT strategy to meet business needs; how successful they were in deploying ICT and related teams to meet business requirements and to effectively manage business priorities. The final four winners were selected on the basis of their own and their team’s accomplishments.

“It is striking to notice how much more business impact these CIO’s are having,” said Frederic De Meyer, Program Director at CIONET International. “Virtually all of this year’s candidates have put programs in place to get their ICT teams work closely with business people, sometimes in very innovative ways.”
According to member of the jury Nils Fonstad, Research Scientist at MIT Center for Information System Research “This year’s Finalists reveal that in the most successful firms, CIOs are sharing digital leadership responsibilities with other CxOs, collaborating tightly to build the digital capabilities necessary to be innovative and competitive”.