When the Province of Prince Edward Island established a CIO position in July 2000, Bill Drost was selected to take charge. As the province’s first CIO, Drost says he has been tasked with raising awareness about IT in government and laying the groundwork for future applications and projects.
“The first CIO really needs to do a lot of groundwork in awareness building and changing the culture of the organization to understand what the role of the CIO should be and the role IT and information management should play in the organization.
“The second CIO in the organization normally does some infrastructure building and puts some systems in place. They build on the foundation that the first CIO was respon-sible for. Then the third CIO gets credit for a whole lot of stuff that the first two did.”
Drost feels one of his most significant accomplishments since taking on the CIO role has been the implementation of a deputy level steering committee. The committee is responsible for making executive decisions on IT in the province.
“I have been lobbying for such a steering committee and I am glad that they have accepted it.”
When it comes to his current agenda, the inaugural CIO is mapping out a plan for the government’s enterprise resource planning systems, conducting a major network infrastructure review and working to implement improved IT business planning.