Identifying government chief information officer education and training needs: the case of Saudi Arabia

This paper identifies education and training needs of Government Chief Information Officers (GCIO) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It aims to provide foundation that would assist the KSA national e-Government program (YESSER) in identifying and prioritizing initiatives oriented towards building the capacity of GCIOs. Based on the results of a survey conducted among GCIOs and highest IT officials of 30 government agencies and the results of four semi-structured interviews, the paper identifies the knowledge areas and skills that should be developed by GCIO educational programs, the stages of public sector ICT in which GCIOs are most involved, the preferred delivery modes for the training, the preferred institutions for hosting GCIOs education and training programs, and the prerequisites for those who should participate in GCIO educational programs. In addition to the policy recommendations for the KSA Government, the main contribution of the paper is the validation of a methodology that can be applied by any government for designing capacity-building programs for their IT leaders.