CIO as fact finder, fixer, and framer in a post-truth IT world

Social and political scientists are alarmed at the shocking state of facts in the world today. See: Alex Edmans, May Contain Lies; Steven Brill, The Death of Truth; Renee DiResta, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality; and Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War.

Back in the day, CIOs had to occasionally combat bad, overly simplified, and under-nuanced facts encountered by executives in airline flight magazines. Today, IT reality itself is under attack by utopian and dystopian propagandists and estranged-from-how-technology-really-works, never-installed-an-enterprise-system wackadoos. Now, more than ever, digital leaders must take an active role in how facts are collected, vetted, and framed. The facts that drive information investments require an umpire.

Where do facts come from?

I admit it. I was naïve. I used to take facts for granted — believing there was some cosmic Platonic vault from whence quality information flowed.