Organisational change is the most common top IT priority among both CIOs and CEOs, a survey from the British Computer Society has found.

Around a third of both CIOs (36%) and CEOs (35%) chose organisational change as the top prioritiy for their IT teams in the BCS survey.

Among CEOs, organisational change was closely followed by operational efficiency as top priority, with 27% of the vote. However, only 12% of CIOs listed operational efficiency as their top priority.

Meanwhile, CIOs were more likely to list ‘strategy and planning’ as their top priority (19%) than CEOs (13%).

Roughly the same proportion of each – around 8% – ranking information security as the top priority.

The survey also asked its 252 respondents what issues the IT department should be working on (i.e. all priorities, not just their top ones). Operational efficiency was again flagged by more CEOs (72%) than CIOs (67%), and strategy and planning was more popular among CIOs (75%) than CEOs (68%).

Whatever their priorities were, only 29% of CIOs said they had the budget to achieve them.

Some CIOs are struggling to balance the objective to drive organisational change with the requirement to improve efficiency. It quoted one CIO that said they were "finding it very difficult to convince directors that investing in technology can make efficiency savings elsewhere in the organisation."

"Whilst operational savings could be made, it is impossible to find the time to allocate to this due to resource limitations," another CIO said. "In addition the CIO function is built into my role without the title. Effectively the organisation has over-optimistic delivery expectations given the available resource."