Global business investment in IT appears to be on the rise with only 22 per cent of respondents to Deloitte’s 2013 CIO Survey indicating their tech budgets had decreased this year.
Deloitte spoke to more than 700 CIOs from 36 countries – around 30 from Australia – with the majority (78 per cent) of respondents indicating their budgets had increased or stayed the same since 2012.
One in four Australian respondents said there had been no movement in their budgets over the past 12 months. This was aligned to the global trend in allocating budgets to “business as usual” activities.
Globally, 42 per cent of budgets are being allocated towards change or growth activities, and 58 per cent towards business as usual initiatives.
Still, restrained IT budgets are giving rise to fears that Australian CIOs will be unable to deliver on projects, deal with security threats and transform the IT group fast enough to meet business needs, Deloitte said.
The survey found current IT priorities are around strengthening risk and security and developing IT staff and skills.
Meanwhile, Australian CIOs faired worst globally in the partnering stakes with only 32 per cent ranking themselves as an “excellent” strategic partner. Just over two-thirds (68 per cent) rated themselves as “fair”.
Although Australian CIOs agreed that the business generally expected them to implement business strategy, they “also felt strongly that they were expected to deliver on programs and projects and routine IT services.”
“These results again support the fact that Australia is failing badly at their business partnerships either because the business does not understand what they do or because they are do not understand what the business really wants from them,” the survey said.
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