Leader: The CIO Agenda for 2006

The next 12 months look to be a challenging time for IT chiefs, who face battles to prove both their own credibility and the value of their investments to the boardroom and the rest of the business.

This is the message we got from our second annual CIO Agenda survey, which took a straw poll of 12 members of silicon.com's CIO Jury to find out from the coalface what the outlook is for IT budgets, new technologies and the CIO's own career path in 2006.

Some of the mainstream consumer technologies have the potential to reshape the way we do business over the next decade and now is the time to start exploring that shift.

Our small sample of CIOs took a less optimistic view of IT budget predictions than some analyst groups such as Gartner (which has tipped a 10 to 15 per cent rise), and most of the IT chiefs we polled claim their spend will stay flat at best but probably will fall, especially in operational expenditure.

This squeeze is also reflected in the technology and strategy areas CIOs will be focusing on in 2006. The CIO Agenda respondents cited IT governance as the top priority, highlighting the increased pressure to measure and benchmark whether IT projects really are delivering value for money.

In terms of challenges for the year ahead, the CIO Agenda survey shows it is the same old chestnuts - the need to engage more with the business and a lack of acceptance in the boardroom - that bother IT chiefs.

It's not all doom and gloom of course. The CIO Agenda results on IT budgets show there are significant increases predicted in the proportion of spend devoted to new technology investment - although largely as a result of efficiency savings made on the operational side.

This is where there is an opportunity for CIOs to prove their worth by being bold. Some of the mainstream consumer technologies have the potential to reshape the way we do business over the next decade and now is the time to start exploring that shift.

That doesn't mean making wild investments in over-hyped technologies, as some did during the dot-com boom, but it does mean getting a grip on how young people - tomorrow's grown-up consumers - are using technology. Gartner even advises CIOs to try out an Xbox themselves.

But that's about as exciting as it's likely to get in 2006. For now the CIO Agenda is about consolidation, getting more out of existing investments and establishing more credibility in the boardroom by proving the true value of IT to the business.

Read silicon.com's exclusive CIO Agenda series: part one on the 2006 IT shopping list, part two on how IT budgets are shaping up for next year and part three on the evolution of the CIO role.