Dawning of the digital director: boards needed them when they went through a data information revolution before.

• Author: Guinn, Donald E.
• Position: ENDNOTE

Ed. Note: Today's digital revolution is not the first such revolution in data technology oversight that corporate boards have had to adjust to in recent times. In the 1980s boards were wrestling with the advent of the personal computing age and how that was transforming their businesses. In 1985, Donald E. Guinn, then the chairman and CEO of Pacific Telesis Group, provided in the pages of DIRECTORS & BOARDS a director's perspective of the 'digital board' as it was evolving at that time--as witnessed from his perch both at PacTel and on the board of banking giant Security Pacific Corp. The following is an excerpt from his article, "A New Role: The Director As EDP Adviser" [Winter 1985]. Note the similarities in language used to describe digital revolutions then and now.

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HARDLY A SECTOR of American business remains untouched these days by the computer revolution, or, more specifically, by the revolution in the way in which information is handled, processed, and moved about electronically. Moreover, with vigor undiminished, the electronic revolution continues to reshape business operations, stretching them in new and sometimes unexpected directions.

At Pacific Telesis Group, where we offer communications products and services, I've had the opportunity to be near the heart of this information-age revolution. Thanks to that vantage point, and the one I also enjoy as a director of Security Pacific Corp. and Security Pacific National Bank, it's clear that banking is one industry where the revolution is stretching--some might say straining--things in vastly new directions.

Security Pacific hasn't escaped the impact. Electronic information handling plays an ever-increasing role within the company. In recent years, the bank has added a system of computer terminals that permits each teller to communicate directly with the central data processing facility. It has installed hundreds of automated teller machines at its branches and elsewhere. Expenditures to develop and implement electronic data processing capabilities rose to more than $200 million in 1983 from $80 million in 1978. A computer center has been constructed at Brea, Calif., near Los Angeles, at a cost of $100 million. And, the electronic transfer of funds has grown to the point where the company is moving not millions but billions of dollars around the country daily.

As a result, Security Pacific has done what, to my knowledge, no other bank and few, if any, other...