Fifty-eight percent of the IT managers who admitted to being worried about meeting compliance requirements blamed the increasing volume of IT and business regulations. These include the Data Protection Act, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Fifty-two percent felt that the problem lay with their lack of awareness of the legislation while 44% blamed a lack of time for failure to meet compliance requirements.
Compliance has increased IT costs by an average of 12% for almost half of the 1,030 British IT managers surveyed. On average, over one-tenth of the annual IT budget is spent complying with legislation.
One-third of organisations have had to invest in new technology, such as backup, disaster recovery, and software solutions, said the survey, but well over half of the respondents confirmed that they did not expect to see any return on their investment.
Compliance demands are also having an effect on how IT managers view their jobs, with two-thirds of those surveyed believing that compliance requirements made their jobs more demanding and one-third claiming their jobs are now less attractive.
Steve Lewis, Enterprise Systems Director with Dell UK, said:
"IT should be at the centre of efforts to improve business performance, and IT managers could benefit from working more closely with their legal departments to understand the impact of legislation and the penalties of non-compliance – and then pass this information on to their staff."