Challenges in Technology 
While I see data sets everywhere, I don't see them connected to or aligned with an organization's value chain to provide timely insight for decision making (what many allude to as strategy). In my industry, the need is to get clean data sets on federal spending, corroborate that with other predictive data and provide visual insights for decision making. Data visualization is still in its infancy. It needs to be able to extract insights from raw data sets using deeper heuristic models.

For example, my nine-year-old son checks the weather report daily and chooses his clothes accordingly. Weather forecasts are complicated and draw from numerous data sources while factoring for aberrant changes. Countless organizations rely on weather predictions and visual weather charts, just like my son. I want to see something similar for industry and for value chain analytics.
360 Degree View 

Sometimes, we may not get all of the data and may have to resort to intelligent guesses. For example, insurance actuaries employ customer data that isn't available to industry, and they intelligently guess consumer behavior. For industry to do the same, we'd have to fill gaps with heuristic and historical patterns. Powerful data sources like AWS and Google, in conjunction with a tool like SAP HANA, could power a new revolution and fill those gaps. This is underway, but insights into an organization and its customers involve both vertical (depth) and horizontal (breadth), stitchable information. There's ground to cover as we also address security and privacy issues before presenting a 360-degree view.

Role of CIOs
Technology is evolving from an enabler of business strategy to a trusted advisor. I envision a world in which data informs every strategic move visual data that includes historical, predictive and competitive intelligence. This allows the CIO to serve as weatherman for the organization. Technology will bridge the gap between silos and provide stakeholders with the information and insights needed to perform at the next level. 

The sum of the parts with information sharing is many times greater than the whole. As a result, CIOs play an indispensable role in an organization's strategy, investments and business execution.