Business process improvements, innovation and BI are among the top priorities for chief information officers for 2008, but anxieties persist about skills shortages, according to extensive new research from analyst firm Gartner.

The Gartner EXP CIO report Making the Difference: The 2008 CIO Agenda polled nearly 1500 CIOs globally and found 85 per cent expect " significant change" over the next three years.

Innovation moved from tenth position on the list of business priorities last year to third this, while business intelligence remained number one among technology priorities, reflecting the growing importance of business-based skills in the CIO portfolio, according to Gartner vice president Dave Aron.

"It's less and less OK to be just good at IT," he argued. "CIOs need to talk to business leaders and find out what makes the business [differentiate] and then see how IT can support that."

Seamus Reilly of consultancy Ernst & Young added that information security has a key role in enabling the CIO to take on the additional risk and cost necessary to drive innovation and business change.

"Information security must not only be involved at an early stage in the technical decision process, providing advice and guidance, but also in the design of the technical solution which will be deployed, to ensure that major risk areas are identified, protected against or accepted by the business," he added.

Gartner's Aron also argued that although budgets in UK companies are set to grow at around 2 per cent, CIOs must prepare for economic recession. "CIOs should be able to articulate why IT funding shouldn't be cut," he added. "It can be a real differentiator because investing in IT can actually help the business to cut costs elsewhere."

But many CIOs expressed their frustration about being unable to assemble the right team of skilled professionals. Globally, only 27 per cent said they have "the right number of skilled people to meet business needs", according to the survey.

Aron explained that investments in training and mentoring schemes could help alleviate the problem. "You can hire Java programmers but how do you find an IT business leader?" he asked.

Richard Brown, head of technology security & risk services, at Ernst & Young agreed that CIOs can only engage meaningfully with the business "if they have appropriately skilled resources who can work across the business and IT agendas".

"Business and IT leaders need to work hand in hand to achieve this better understanding, and to set the bar high when agreeing targets," he added.