Perhaps this is less a knock on those people than it is with the position of CTO/CIO itself. A role that only works effectively when it's filled by a special unicorn candidate is a broken role.

I can think of some reasons why this might be:

- It takes a particular kind of personality to ascend to a C-suite role, and that personality isn't a good fit for solving this particular problem

- Concentrating responsibility for this problem in a single C-suite role lets the rest of the C-suite ignore it as "somebody else's problem"

- Concentrating responsibility for this problem in a single C-suite role serves mostly to provide a handy scapegoat when things inevitably go wrong

- This is a cross-cutting problem that can't effectively be siloed into a single role, even a C-suite one; unless the CEO/board also buy in, the CTO/CIO will lack the authority required to override objections or inaction on the part of other officers