Study: 70 per cent of CIOs say they need more support from the board

BCS survey suggests IT leaders lack tools and boardroom influence to meet the challenges they face

Only 29 per cent of CIOs feel they have sufficient resources to achieve their top priorities according to a study by the Chartered Institute for IT, the British Computer Society (BCS).

The study, entitled What should CEOs know from their CIOs?, set out to discover what CIOs are being asked to do by their CEOs and compare it with what CIOs think they should be doing.

The study found that business transformation and operational change was the top priority among the highest number of both CEOs and CIOs, at 32 per cent and 36 per cent respectively.

However, the survey also highlighted that only 29 per cent of CIOs feel that they had enough resources to achieve what their CEO or senior management team had asked their team to do.

BCS chief David Clarke believes that CIOs are not getting enough support to meet the challenges they have been set.

"Today's CIO is not being provided with the right resources to get the job done," he said.

"CIOs are being tasked with high level, priority tasks that can shape a whole organisation. They need the right tools to achieve this," he said.

Perhaps in recognition of this, 50 per cent of CIOs thought they should be working on "nurturing the talent and skills of your IT workforce", while only 33 per cent of CEOs expressed this view.

CIOs and CEOs also placed different levels of importance on business relationship management, with 52 per cent of CIOs saying it was an issue that needed to be worked on, compared with 40 per cent of CEOs.

Clarke believes that CIOs need to take more charge of an organisation's strategy if the UK is to compete on a global scale.

"It's time for CIOs to take their deserved seat in boardrooms around the world and work with board colleagues to develop, and to own fully the organisation's strategy. Technology leadership should become an essential and common path to the board if the UK is going to continue to be equipped to compete on a global scale," he said.

The research was carried out by the BCS and had a total of 252 responses between 6 October and 2 November 2011.