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Section 6: Technology
The final topical section of the survey addressed the issue of technology. Questions focused broadly on management of information technology and likelihood of outsourcing specific IT functions in the future. Question 16 asks about company policy regarding the Internet. Responses appear in Figure 23.
Two-thirds of respondents (65.6 percent) report that their organizations have a formal policy to guide use of the Internet at work. Just over one-third (35.7 percent) have a way to monitor the amount of time employees spend on the Internet, and approximately one-third (34.6 percent) have a policy concerning social media usage by employees. Percentages have been rising for the "a policy for Internet at work" and "a way to monitor time on the Internet" since the beginning of the survey in 2007. "A policy concerning social media" was changed from "a policy concerning blogs" and therefore should not be compared with prior years’ responses.
The next question asks about information system security, productivity and evaluation; results appear in Figure 24.
There have been no statistically significant changes on the ratings of these statements between 2009 and 2010. Mean responses indicate weak to moderate agreement with each of them. Although Figure 25 would indicate a slight trend up from 2007 in all these areas, as technology continues to drive organizations, executives seem to be becoming more confident in their abilities to monitor and understand it.
Respondents from larger organizations seem to have more confidence in their IT security protocols than do respondents from smaller organizations. As in 2009, we see a slight relationship between respondent age and two of these statements: those under 50 years old express slightly more agreement that they are able to 1) monitor productivity of their IT staff; and 2) evaluate the competence of their IT leader or CTO.
Trends for these responses can be seen in Figure 25.
