Cigref Removes Chief Digital Officer From Its HR Taxonomy

In Cigref’s nomenclature of IT job titles, there is no longer a chief digital officer: the profile has been removed.

This function is now seen as more of a cross-cutting role than a standalone occupation. Its duties are distributed across several business lines. Those divisions leverage digital tools that the IT department does not always oversee, while they increasingly contribute to shaping the digital offering intended for final customers. As for products aimed at internal clients, their structure is often managed by the digital leadership.

Another profile has disappeared year after year: the IT department’s marketing lead. Observation: it practically no longer exists as such, at least among the member organizations of the working group that developed the nomenclature. Its responsibilities have been spread across several services or assigned to CIOs. In some organizations, communications are handled by a unit rather than by a single person.

In Cigref’s 2024 edition of its nomenclature*, the organization noted that the chief digital officer function could be entrusted to the CIO. And that the “IT marketing” activity should not concern a single individual, but should be disseminated across the organization, at different levels depending on the business lines.

The DevOps profile, considered last year, integrated this year

In 2024, Cigref had contemplated integrating the DevOps profile. This did not happen, due to a lack of consensus. Some members believed that its competencies would complement existing roles. Others thought the function could be covered by adapting the processes and activities of IT professions. It had been concluded that the very concept of DevOps “was still in the process of formalizing.”

The stance has evolved since: here is the profile incorporated into the 2025 nomenclature. It generally follows an early career as a developer, systems and networks administrator, application integrator, or production support specialist. Depending on the level of seniority, it can serve as a bridge to roles such as SRE expert, technical architect, or tech lead, or into management.

The Cigref highlights four performance indicators for the DevOps role:

  • Percentage of deployments that are the source of incidents
  • Quality level of the delivered code
  • Lead time for changes
  • Average time to restore service after an incident

Regarding the necessary skills, the association places these at an equal level (3/5):

  • Solution deployment
  • Service delivery
  • Management of business changes
  • Problem management
  • Risk management

On transversal concepts useful to the DevOps role:

  • Security (4/5)
  • Usability (3)
  • Sustainability (3)
  • Ethics (2)
  • Legal issues related to ICT (2)
  • Privacy (2)
  • Accessibility (1)

The UX designer, another new entrant

Another profile has joined the nomenclature: the UX designer. He typically holds a two-year or three-year degree. A specialization in design, ergonomics, or cognitive psychology is sometimes required. He can then advance to roles such as lead UX, product designer, head of design, etc.

Cigref treats the following as KPIs:

  • Compliance rate with accessibility standards (RGAA audit score)
  • User satisfaction rate (customer satisfaction, NPS, perceived usability assessment scale**)
  • Rate of unfinished user journeys
  • Pre/post-optimization conversion rate, task success rate, number of user errors
  • Solution productivity (time measured on a user journey)
  • Interface EcoIndex score, average energy consumption per page, estimated carbon footprint

Regarding the skills:

  • User experience (4)
  • Needs identification (4)
  • IT strategy and policy (4)
  • Application design (3)
  • Testing (3)
  • Solution deployment (3)

And cross-cutting notions:

  • Usability (5)
  • Accessibility (5)
  • Ethics (4)
  • Legal issues related to ICT (4)
  • Privacy (4)
  • Sustainability (3)
  • Security (1)

* In 2024, Cigref also added two profiles. On the one hand, the data architect, which echoed the broad outlines of the enterprise architect profile… with a strong data focus. On the other hand, the product manager, stemming from the increased activities assigned to the product owner.

** Measures the perception of a product or service according to user sentiment, across three axes: effectiveness, efficiency, and interaction satisfaction.

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Dawn Liphardt

Dawn Liphardt

I'm Dawn Liphardt, the founder and lead writer of this publication. With a background in philosophy and a deep interest in the social impact of technology, I started this platform to explore how innovation shapes — and sometimes disrupts — the world we live in. My work focuses on critical, human-centered storytelling at the frontier of artificial intelligence and emerging tech.