Everyone expects the chief information officer to be firmly in control of things. For most people, information technology is still something to be kept at a distance, taken for granted when it is working but a source of anxiety at the first hiccup. The CIO is the primary underwriter of the “five nines”— the 99.999 percent reliability standard that originated with the telephone dial tone. The game, in this view, is all about control: budget, personnel, technology, vision, vendors, projects.… Nothing can be allowed to go wrong.