Despite the increasingly central role played by IT in modern business, responsibility for business strategy in UK companies shows little sign of shifting toward the IT manager's office.

Things are changing in many public sector organisations, with markedly fewer finance leaders taking responsibility for IT at board level, but this is not being balanced by an increase in direct representation of IT on the board.

Instead the number of public sector bodies with no board-level representation of IT at all has increased substantially over the last year.

Shifts in IT responsibility within the public sector are likely to have been caused by its poor record in completing major IT projects on schedule and within budget, and the high profile of failures.

In May last year, a wide-ranging study carried out by vnunet.com's sister titles IT Week and Financial Director showed that 45 per cent of large organisations in the UK had a board-level IT director, and 21 per cent represented IT on the board through the finance director. Six per cent had no board-level representation of IT at all.

The research was repeated in May 2003 - both surveys were sponsored by IT supplier Unisys - and the figures revealed little movement. The 2003 survey found 44 per cent of large firms with an IT director on the board, 21 per cent represented by finance, and seven per cent with no IT representation.

Other categories, such as representation of IT via the managing director or chief executive, also showed an insignificant shift over the previous year.

A breakdown of boardroom responsibility by industry sector revealed few pockets of change in the private sector. But a marked shift was evident throughout the public sector.

A substantial number of public sector finance chiefs have given up direct responsibility for IT in the 12 months since the first study. This year we found less than a quarter - 23 per cent - of public sector finance managers were responsible for IT. A year earlier, almost a third - 32 per cent - were representing IT at board level.

Our figures showed a small increase in the number of public sector organisations with direct representation of IT at the highest level, to 32 per cent from 30 per cent a year earlier.

This shows that IT chiefs are wresting control from their finance colleagues in a tiny fraction of cases. The largest change was in public sector organisations where IT is no longer represented on the board at all - up to 16 per cent from six per cent a year earlier.

"There's never been a more important time for IT to be on the board. At the top level of organisations there is not enough understanding of which technologies can enable things to get done quicker and cheaper," said David Smith, chief executive of Unisys's Global Future Forum think-tank.

"At the moment IT is only the servant [implementing the] ideas of the company, but ideas would be different if you had business-savvy IT people on the board," he added.