CIOs Feel Stress From Tighter Budgets

The job of CIO is getting tougher.

CIOs are being asked to increase innovation and security while cutting costs to meet tighter budgets, according to a survey released Monday by IT advisory firm Gartner.

The survey of 620 CIOs during the last four months of 2002 finds that for the third consecutive year, cutting costs is the No. 1 concern for CIOs, whose jobs have been made more challenging by business managers' demands to reduce security risks and innovate faster.

"Being more cost-effective, reducing business risk, and innovating faster are extremely difficult to achieve concurrently," Ellen Kitzis, group VP for Gartner's executive program unit, said in a statement. "Together, they risk breaking the budget."

"Must-do initiatives" include those that support ongoing business objectives and increase data security and privacy. These initiatives have taken precedence over "want-to-do" projects such as customer-relationship management, knowledge management, and E-enablement.

The top technology priorities include securing systems from internal and external threats. No. 2 is application integration to get more out of legacy systems and provide greater data availability to everyone in the business. Enterprise portal deployment is another cost-effective approach to making data more easily available to employees, business partners, and customers.

CIOs say business-operating budgets are growing faster than IT budgets, which some Gartner analysts say may indicate business skepticism around the effectiveness of IT investments.

The top management priority for CIOs in 2003 is providing guidance for the board and executives, which ranked No. 6 last year.

"CIOs are providing guidance to these key executives, while continuing to demonstrate the business value of IS and IT," Kitzis says. "They are also spending time on a new focus area this year: IT governance. As companies become more complex and IT a big-budget item, the role of IT governance is becoming critical."