Image: Gartner
Technology is only used to 43 percent of its potential, Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. announced Tuesday, in sharing the results of its annual chief information officer survey conducted by the research and consulting group in the fall of 2012.
"An average of 43 percent represents a hallmark, or a clarion call if you will," Gartner vice president and research fellow Mark McDonald said. There's a "quiet crisis," he said, "being that CIOs as a whole, the entire industry, and their practice of it, is in need of reform."
One reason why, McDonald said, is that too many CIOs reported spending their time on technology that they already own, instead of developing and researching new technologies to solve their problems.
"CIOs have to extend their behaviors from [only] tending IT, into hunting and harvesting," he explained.
Parts of the research are of particular relevance to the legal technology community. For example, only 9 percent of the 2,054 CIOs who responded to the survey told Gartner that the general field of information governance, risk management, and compliance are in their top two concerns.
"Information governance and electronic discovery did show up in the CIO survey results, but they were in very, very narrow niches," McDonald said, answering a journalist's question during the online seminar. "It's a bit like security -- it's something we have to do. It is a requirement of doing business," but it's not what CIOs are proactively prioritizing, he said.
McDonald said the top business priorities of CIOs are increasing enterprise growth, delivering operational results, reducing enterprise costs, attracting and retaining new customers, and improving IT applications and infrastructure. The top technology priorities are analytics and business intelligence, mobile, cloud computing, collaboration, and modernizing old systems.
McDonald's comments were recorded by Gartner and made available for free playback. The report itself is only available to subscribers. There will be a follow-up seminar, New Priorities, Technologies and Leaders Shaping the Future of IT, on Feb. 21.
Evan Koblentz is a reporter for Law Technology News. Send email or follow him on Twitter.
