New research has painted a positive picture for IT professionals in 2008, with increasing resources for council IT departments and greater influence for chief information officers (CIOs).

Forrester vice president Alex Cullen said that as business executives increasingly view technology as a strategic differentiator for their organisations, IT chiefs face a “fork in the road” that will see the top 15 to 20 per cent choosing to become more influential within the business. He added that these IT leaders will seek to more closely integrate their departments with the wider business by sending smaller groups into different business areas to act as specialist technology advisers.

There is also a great opportunity for so-called “change agent” IT chiefs to take advantage of their insight into line-of-business and functional silos in order to become trusted advisers to the board, argued Cullen.

“We’re seeing more CIOs presenting to the board and being promoted as internal board members,” Cullen explained. “It’s a big reward but the risk is that you must be very good at working with your business peers, and it’s not something most CIOs can do.”

Andy Mulholland, global chief technology officer at consultancy Capgemini, said there is a huge opportunity for career advancement if CIOs can change the nature of their role to one focused on using technology to drive business.

However, Tim Murfet, head of technology consulting at Accenture, argued that IT chiefs need to be both IT “general managers” and “business change agents” if they are to be successful.

“They are difficult people to find but these are two roles one person has to do,” he argued.

Meanwhile, the latest annual IT Trends in Local Government report released last week by public sector IT body Socitm forecast that despite a tough financial climate, IT spending will increase by nine per cent to £3bn in 2007/8 following a fall last year.

“Respondents are getting a lot more involved with business issues rather than technology issues,” said report editor John Serle. “It’s a good thing because we’ve been arguing for years that we need to focus on what technology can do for the business.”