In a packed week for me at the Gartner outsourcing conference, Dutch vendor Getronics was kind enough to ask me to chair a Monday afternoon discussion about the future of the CIO at a fringe event.

Getronics (which is busy divesting parts of itself and rebuilding around a "narrower but deeper" strategy, according to Jos Schoemaker, chief operations officer Global Services) saw the event as an opportunity to talk about itself in the context of new opportunities for the CIO in the great, globally multi-sourced future that has become the lingua franca of all such events.

A few days previously, I chaired a similar discussion at a European Outsourcing Association event nearby, where the idea that 'CIO' now stands for 'chief innovation officer' got the biggest laugh of the day. As one delegate said, "We haven't got to grips with the information bit yet". So what is going on?

Perhaps the answer emerged at the Getronics event this week. One member of the panel was Albert Sprokholt, director Europe for EquaTerra. The problem, he said, is that CIOs quit once an IT programme has become outsourced, because they find themselves no longer inside the information, as it were, but instead at the thin end of a chain of suppliers which they are now being asked to manage. Not only that, but they have responsibility for the contract, while not having any direct operational involvement in its workings.

In other words, the bits of the job they are good at are taken away, they are not necessarily qualified to be supplier managers, and they are liable for the success or failure of a contract but without getting involved in the fun stuff. In those circumstances, innovation is perhaps not top of the list of achievables.

So what did Mr Sprokholt do when this happened to him? He joined the outsourcing provider, and now earns his keep in business development, marketing and delivery.