IT Leaders

This is shown by some of the biggest changes in numbers in the BCS IT Leaders survey in recent years. But the numbers also demonstrate that when IT leaders raise issues that need addressing (security and cloud, yet again, loom large) - they know of what they speak.

It is hardly surprising that responders this year have had things to say about good people management, business continuity strategy and, as always, where they feel their concerns and gaps are most pressing.

There is a small amount of commentary in the following report, but it is mostly composed of raw numbers and verbatim comments from those at the (very sharp) end.

These subjects will inform BCS content for the coming year - and will be reflected in the membership magazine ITNOW, the ITNOW e-newsletter and ITNOW’s new series of expert webinars. Look out for them and get involved.

Brian Runciman MBCS
Head of Content and Insight, BCS The Chartered Institute for IT

Key findings: 

The priorities for 2021 are operational efficiencies (59%), business transformation and organisational change (55%) and remote and distributed working (48%). 

• When asked to single out their number one priority, the top answer is business transformation and organisational change, selected by 22% of respondents. This is followed by operational efficiencies (15%) and staff engagement and well-being (10%). 
• The technologies that organisations are prioritising for 2021 are cyber security (61%), cloud (also 61%), and business process automation (47%). 
• When asked to identify their top technology priority, cyber security (18%) edges ahead of cloud (15%). Also with 15% is business process automation, closely followed by agile methods (14%). 

Only 9% of participants feel their organisation has enough resources to achieve success in 2021.