Its a classic exercise for the kids: The house is on fire. Youcan only save ten of your beloved possessions. What do you grab?Okay, now the rules have changed: You can only save nine items. Anysix. Any four. As your options get narrower and narrower, what doyou save?
The economy may be a few steps away from its darkest lows, but werestill in a recession, and information officers are findingthemselves in a cruel real-life version of that once-silly kidsgame. Were cutting your budget by 10 percent. Who do you want tosave? Were cutting by 20 percent. Were cutting by 25 percent. Whomakes the cut, and why? And how do you fill the gaps created bythose who are gone?
We asked these questions of CIOs and other high-level tech decisionmakers. Of course, asking who youd save in the event of cutbacks isawfully close to asking who you wouldnt save. Thats a topic thatmakes everybody nervous, so we promised not to use any realnamescompany or personalin this article.

When it comes to naming the most crucial position in aninsurance IT department, many CIOs, particularly from small andmid-sized carriers, came down foursquare behind their databaseadministrators. One, head of a fairly large P&C operation inPennsylvania, put it bluntly: Regardless of what language youreprogramming in or what packaged application youre using to run yourcompany, at the end of the day its all about the data. If you donthave anybody to help you manage the databases, you wont be able tomake the correct decisions to run your company.
Finding someone outside the company wasnt an option, even if itcost less. Nobody felt you could simply replace a good DBA with arandom consultant from the outside and expect that consultant to dojust as good a job. Reports are a never-ending need, said the CIOof one small specialty lines carrier in New York City. The networkissues could be outsourced, but the database administrator is woveninto what we do every day.
Also high on the list of critical employees are softwaredevelopers, even with the market still somewhat saturated withdot-com refugees. Coders with that same hip-deep level ofintegration usually find themselves protected as wellits hard tooutsource support for a program you created in-house; you might endup having to bring back the people you let go, this time ashigh-paid consultants.
You gotta have someone who understands whats going on [with thecompanys software], said the CIO of a mid-sized Dallas-basedP&C company. I can outsource other technical activities, heexplained, but proprietary software dictates a dedicatedstaff.
A CIO of a small company agrees: We have a lot of proprietaryapplications, and they need to be supported. Thats not a job youcan run a classified to fill.
Programmers security may also be dependent on the companys focus.Someone proficient with imaging applications is relatively safe ifthe company is beginning a document management program. And someonewith a broad knowledge of mainframes and integration will do wellin a merger-happy environment, as the vice-president of technologyat a small (for now, apparently) Phoenix-based life insurancecompany pointed out. Acquisitions are our number one area ofgrowth, he said. Programmers are absolutely vital to the merging ofthe various computer systems.
If push came to shove, many CIOs would look to outsource suchmatters as networking and infrastructure, but others saw that asfar too basic a need to farm out. You need to continue to run yourbusiness, said a CIO of an all-lines P&C carrier; he would keepthe network team protected.
Another CIOthis one from a mid-size life insurerlists the networkteam just after his senior software developer, saying, Withoutthem, theres no way to deploy all that new programming the softwareguy is doing.

Chiefs or Indians?
An interesting thought division came up when asked about keeping ITmanagers, or those they manage. Some felt that good leaders areharder to find than good grunts, while others expected to reducethe number of managers while broadening the responsibilities ofthose who stayed.
Were a hands-on organization, said one CIO who put his managementteam at the top of his list. Were all working people, includingmyself. Others echoed the point, opting to hang on to thevice-president of software development, or the chief architect. Butothers took the precise opposite view.
Wed combine units and eliminate some management so we can hang onto the people who do the work, said the CIO of one large nationalhealth insurer.
There is one employee above all others who is safest when the axestarts to fall. This persons title might not reflect her (or his)indispensability, but it might. If she does have an appropriatetitle, its usually something like relationship manager. Youprobably know who we mean: The person who combines deep-rootedtechnical savvy with insurance-industry know-how. There are techpeople who happen to work for insurance companies, and insurancepeople who know some technology, but this person has both sidesdown pat.
As one CIO of a mid-sized all-lines company put it, We need someonewho is technical enough to say to the businesspeople, I know youwant this project done and it sounds very simple, but heres whyyour idea wont work. But he also has the business knowledge to sayto the others [in the tech group] who want to advance their ownprojects, This wont work for the business, and here are fivereasons why not.
That kind of person is even more crucial because he not only knowstechnology and insurance, but your technology and your business.Thats also not something you can advertise for; it takes years tobuild the knowledge base. One CIO puts it even more plainly: I cantoutsource to people who understand my business.
And even if you could find someonean outsourcer or consultantwhoknows your business and your software, that doesnt mean all ispeaches and cream. As a CIO from a mid-size P&C carrier said,outside vendors and third-party business partners, can be, quitefrankly, difficult. And that emphasizes the need for thatrelationship manager. Only someone with a full balance of businessand tech talents can adequately communicate with these outsidecompanies.
Its more important for the business problems to get solved than forthe tech problems to get solved, chimes in an executivevice-president of a large mortgage and insurance company. Andanother, a vice-president of human resources at one of the largestinsurance companies in the nation, said, We are not a technologycompany. We are an employee benefits company, and we must befocused on providing service to our clients.

What We Need Here Is an Ability to Communicate
Surprisingly, technical savvy didnt always top the list of skillsthat would allow people to keep their jobs, even when weve beentalking strictly about the IT department. Businessabilitiesbusiness savvyis always high on the list. A grasp ofP&L, a knack for business, and even good people skills areimportant. Very important.
When asked, it was a combination of technical and business abilitythat led the list of skills CIOs were looking for. After rattlingoff a list of what he would look for, one CIO remarked, I haventgiven one technical skill yet, have I? When asked about desirabletech skills, he had expounded instead on the value of goodcommunication. Indeed, the more general aptitudes of teamwork andresponsibility were deemed far more important than any particulartechnical ability.
And yet, every CIO was eventually lured back to the technicalabilities that are most in demand. Its pretty tough to say COBOL isimportant in this day and age, said a CIO from a large lifeinsurerwho then said exactly that: Hey, everybodys administrationsystems are COBOL generated. It may not be sexy, but COBOLprogramming still ranks high as a desirable skill, followed closelyby C++ and Java proficiency.
Also key in terms of the technical skills theyd look to keep is aknowledge of mainframe architecture, with AS/400 and MVS mentionedrepeatedly as examples. For networks, Novell and Windows NT get themust-have nod. For Web development, the mainstays of Java andJavaScript remain key, although companies are increasingly relyingon broader middleware products such as WebSphere and VisualInterDev for IBM and Microsoft shops, respectively.
Someone who can find patterns of information that would allow us tobetter serve our clients is always in demand, said the humanresources rep at the aforementioned life insurer, which uses IBMsUniversal Database. Others point to a combination of Microsoft SQLServer and Crystal Reports as the must-have data processing skills.We use Crystal Reports to figure out everything about our business,said one CIO at a specialty lines carrier. It has become central towhat we do.

If the average CIO could design his dream tech staffer, theblueprint would include not just the skills needed for today, butthe vision to see what will be important down the line. I dont wantanybody too comfortable with what they already know, said the headof IT at a small P&C company. It is our goal to make our staffas multiskilled as possible. Two years ago, we might have hadsomeone who was only a DB2 DBA, and we would say, well, youre goingto learn SQL Server and Oracle, and we want you to know somethingabout Windows NT or Windows 2000. To the extent that we canpossibly do it, were trying to broaden the skill sets of the staffso they arent pigeonholed. But we need people who areself-motivated.
Technology is changing so fast, said that tech-oriented HR guru.Someone has to be on board to sort out the right technologysolutions, and those decisions have to be smart. Not just fortoday, but for the future.

Eric Berlin is a free-lance technology writer in Maplewood,N.J.

Fixing the Holes

Our first question to the CIOs, essentially, was Who would youwant to keep on staff when the ax comes down? Our second questionwas the next logical step: After the ax comes down, how do you dothe same amount of work with fewer people? The first question wasmet with passionate monologues on the ideal qualities of a techstaffer. The second question was met with laughter.
How do I take ten pounds and put it into a five-pound bucket, isthat what youre asking? said one life-company CIO. Well, you canincent people with overtime pay, and there are other creative waysto get people to do the job. A lot of your problem can be solved,he said, if youve been treating your people well over the years. Itmakes it easier to motivate people to take that hill if theybelieve that the company is their company. But, he concluded, Youneed to lower the bar on what is to be produced, and when.
Several CIOs advocated sacrificing the past for the good of thefuture. If a legacy system component is something we felt could belet go, then the staff in that area could be moved to somethingelse, said one.
Another CIO, in agreement: We would have to look at our legacyapplications and freeze themsimply not support or change them anylonger. We are in the midst of replacing the back end of ourinsurance administrative systemsour underwriting component, ourclaims component, our billing and commission systems. From where Isit, it becomes difficult to spend money and resources onsupporting legacy systems that will go away within 18 months.
Many CIOs advocate a shifting to outside consultants. Everything isdone in-house right now, said one CIO at a large life insurer.Nearly every position short of those that required in-depthbusiness knowledge could find itself in the hands of aconsultantnetworking, infrastructure, even software support if thesoftware is not proprietary.
Theres also the concept of cross-training those left behind. We dothat now, in fact, said one CIO. Cross-training is critical as webuild our applications, which are all multi-platform. Our toppeople are comfortable in the mainframe environment as well as theserver environment. Theyre also some of our strongest COBOLpeople.
If all else failedif outside consultancies are nixed, andcross-training impossiblethen a massive reprioritization would needto take place. But most CIOs agreed that these decisions could nottake place solely on the tech side of the business. Wed have to sitwith the business folks and talk about if we cut here, these arethe consequences, said one CIO at a mid-sized P&C carrier. Wecannot forget that every action has consequences.
The business side would have to reprioritize their efforts beforewe could reprioritize ours, said another.
Yet a third was more blunt: I have to have the resources to do thework. Either the work does not get done or the work gets delayed.He concluded: If I lose a resource, then we have to eliminatewhatever that resource did. EB