Stéphane Barast, CIO, Centre Hospitalier de l'Ouest de Guyanais

"This training will put my professional practice on steroids!"

"I think a GM would also have a lot to gain from taking this training, if only to know what to expect and know what he can ask for, what he should demand even from his CIO."

Stéphane Barast, CIO of the Centre Hospitalier de l'Ouest de Guyanais, shares his experience of the CIO Executive Certificate course, offered by CentraleSupélec Exed and Infortive.

Who would you recommend this course to?

"I would recommend this course to anyone who has recently become CIO.
We have speakers who have spent decades managing information systems, who have seen it all, and who have witnessed the evolution of this profession. So, for someone who is about to become CIO, or has been for two or three years, this training is invaluable, as it gives keys that you don't get in other training courses. There are technical or management courses, but a course that covers the entire scope of the CIO's job, especially now with the addition of digital technology, is something I've never seen before. It's something we're not necessarily prepared for."

"I think a GM would also gain a lot from taking this training, if only to know what to expect and know what he can ask for, what he should demand even from his CIO.
The knowledge we're imparting is indispensable for a GM and for a CIO."

What do you consider to be the strengths of the course?

"The strong point is really the practical and efficient side, quite simply because you benefit from the expertise and experience of people who know the business and are still practicing it, who are at the heart of the action.
And then there's the emulation that comes with being able to meet so many CIOs.
I've already met a few CIOs, but I've seen 2 since I've been in French Guiana, whereas here there are 9 of us in the course, and there are all the speakers who are extremely available despite their busy schedules."

What were your most memorable moments?

"I arrived at my job in an empirical way, without any particular training.
The elements that impressed me are those for which I didn't really have any training:
- Steering, since I come from a rather technical field
- And budget management, which will be extremely useful to me, because it's a background I didn't have, and these are things I wasn't doing properly."

"I haven't fully implemented them yet, but I'm in the process of preparing a monthly letter to present to the establishment what we're doing, so that we don't always stay in the ivory tower as we are now.
And for budget tracking, for the moment I'm getting a lot of help, and this is a part where I think I'll become autonomous fairly quickly with the tools we received at the training."

How will training change your professional practice?

"This training course is going to put my professional practice on steroids!
In concrete terms, what's going to change is my internal communication, my budget management, the positioning I'm going to give to IS in relation to the business lines, and part of what I'm going to expect and what I'm going to demand from my teams."