In a time of such general economic constraint – previously on global markets, now from today it seems firmly in the public sector, too – it’s no great headline news to say that CIOs are looking to save money and extract more value from all aspects of ICT investment.

It’s in the details and the nuances that we can find the real data that suggests the underlying emerging shape of the IT landscape we’ll probably be inhabiting for the rest of the decade.

Thus our interest in a new survey of 450 Chief Information Officers conducted by consultancy KPMG that claims that the major unifying factor in the responses it’s got back is what it characterises as a move from ‘cost’ to ‘value’.

"The new, post credit crisis, CIO agenda is dominated by securing value for money but that it also wants to focus on using IT to help transform the business in terms of innovation and productivity," says the report (‘From Cost To Value’).

Great… but cost to value is easy to do as a verbal trick – much harder in real life. That’s because it is something of a slippery transition – and indeed puzzled a great many economists, Marx probably most notable.

But what KPMG seems to be suggesting is that CIOs are putting a renewed focus on getting the best value from IT investments (81% identifying this as a top priority) – especially around squeezing outsourcers until their pips squeak, it seems. Over two-thirds of respondents told the researchers that they now "expect to pay far more attention to the price:quality ratio they currently experience" and that even more expect to be bringing "increased pressure to bear" on their sourcing providers.

Bad news for outsourcers? Perhaps not. They are just part of a wider, emerging perspective on what the firm calls a drive by CIOs to get away (at last? Once again?) from a simple cost-cutting role to a more transformational role for them and their teams, achieved by using IT to drive innovation and enable competitive advantage.

But IT needs to have self-confidence to make that kind of claim. That would be very welcome if it happened – one should be encouraged by the fact that 65% see IT as enabling business innovation, which I am sure is a higher proportion than a similar survey of even ten years back might have suggested.

And fantastic as that ambition is, of course the need to ‘keep the lights on’ is more pressing than ever. In this snapshot, financial sector CIOs are said to be still heavily focused on operational IT concerns (I think we can read ‘saving the company from the regulators’ into that without too much exaggeration). It’s said to be manufacturing CIOs with the most positive attitudes in this group to using ICT to drive innovation and transformation – which, again, I take to be encouraging.

This study along with others we have seen recently does suggest CIOs are trying in essence to balance unforgiving cost-cutting discipline with a genuine desire to create value and extend the firm’s reach.

It’s hard, of course, to do both and you may end up with a sort of creative dis-equilibrium. If you can manage it though, the rewards are immense to your organisation – and career.

Maybe the best new reading of CIO: Chief Imbalance Officer?