Gartner is familiar with organisations that have at least four clear types of positions:

A demand-oriented CIO operating across the enterprise (or perhaps a large city or state government), a supply-driven chief technology officer operating across the enterprise, sometimes referred to as chief infrastructure officer, a chief technology opportunist heavily involved in stimulating new business opportunities, particularly in the e-business arena and line-of-business CIOs, or business information executives, who combine demand and supply functions for their business units (or government agency or department).

Now business has new preoccupations and concerns not always best left to the CIO or CTO. For instance, the imminent transition to the new Australian Privacy Act and the existence of strict overseas privacy regimes which put obligations upon Australian companies has left corporate Australia no choice but to get serious about implementing and publicising a pro-customer privacy compliance program.

IDC senior analyst, enterprise and internet software Natasha David says CIOs might be tempted to dismiss the trend to appoint chief privacy officers as "only in America". After all, the earliest forays into the CXO field have yet to surface in Australia. There aren't too many chief knowledge officers or chief security officers drawing salaries here yet. David says the cynicism of "yet another CXO" should not taint the Australian industry's perceptions because privacy fears do strike close to home.

Internet advertising firm Doubleclick, hugely embarrassed by investigations into its use of cookies to identify users and track their movements, recently appointed two New York public officials to oversee its privacy policies. At IBM head office they were quick to follow, appointing Harriet Pearson to guide the company's privacy policies and practices and also "lead initiatives across IBM that will strengthen consumer privacy protection".

"IBM and Doubleclick are just two examples of the increasing number of companies that are appointing executives to oversee their data privacy policies and initiatives, which currently total 75 worldwide and should jump a hundredfold next year. However, the phenomenon has yet to rear its head in the Australian landscape," David says.

Other corporate icons including American Express, Citigroup, Prudential Insurance and AT&T have all installed chief privacy officers.

In a strong hint that the trend will soon be more prevalent here, the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) is also appointing privacy officers to help its members comply with new Australian privacy laws. "ADMA has committed its 500-strong membership to appoint chief privacy officers (CPOs) charged with smoothly implementing the new privacy law, once passed, along with a number of extra measures consistent with industry best practice," ADMA said recently.

""Effective privacy compliance demands that organisations designate an individual - preferably a senior manager - to be responsible for their information handling practices," says ADMA chief executive officer Rob Edwards. "CPOs will often have additional responsibility for compliance with all aspects of the ADMA code of practice, including e-commerce, telemarketing and fair trading."

Hold on tight, the times are achangin' again folks. In the US, CEOs, CIOs and COOs are making room for a host of others sporting the terms "chief" and "officer" in their position titles. Australia is lagging but may well eventually follow the trend. Already the US has seen leading companies appoint chief knowledge officers, chief customer officers, chief technology officers, (not to be confused with the less popular chief technology opportunists), chief privacy officers, chief data officers and chief security officers.

Some US CIOs have publicly expressed scepticism about the trend. For instance, Sybase VP and CIO Jim Swartz told US CIO earlier this year: "How many chiefs can you have in one company?" So is it a case of too many chiefs, and is Australia destined to follow the same path? Maybe only selectively, or not for a while yet. There are signs Australian bosses are far more conservative than — or perhaps not as visionary as — their US counterparts.

Typically reluctant to add yet more executive members to their teams, they seem more inclined to delegate new areas of expertise like customer management, knowledge management, security or privacy to existing employees as an addition to their workplace duties than to add new, dedicated positions.

Indeed, Australian companies identifiably produce far fewer specialists than their US counterparts. "Australian employers tend to be a bit more down to earth and call a spade a spade, rather than a digging implement," as one recruiter put it to CIO. "The use of descriptive titles has never loomed that large in terms of the Australian psyche."

Yet there are a few CXO titles starting to appear on Australian organisational charts. TMP Worldwide director John Banks says the trend is more likely to manifest in major organisations with either a large amount of Internet exposure or online use and those with businesses heavily based on intellectual capital. But he says not everyone with such responsibilities has either "chief" or "officer" in their titles, and even legal council has been known to take on such roles.