Stories by: Stephanie Overby

Faced with tighter budgets, CIOs are scrutinising everything - including outsourcing. A number of them have taken the keys back to their shops, saving heaps of cash. Here's how you can do it too.

Nearly half of all CIOs use offshore providers today, and two-thirds plan to send work overseas next year, according to US-based Forrester Research. India is still the leader, but as more companies seek to source globally, more countries are emerging to benefit from that demand - each with its own particular strengths and weaknesses.

In the race to develop new pharmaceuticals more quickly, companies are introducing new IT tools. But the tools can't do it alone. CIOs need to change the way people do their work.

John Carrow, vice president and CIO for Unisys, didn't learn to be the IT leader he is today as a computer science graduate student at the University of Illinois. Nor was it during the 16 years he spent in IT at General Electric. It wasn't even during his five years as CIO of Philadelphia, where he helped the mayor turn around that then-bankrupt city. Rather, it was his experience jumping out of planes and working on the ground as a US Army ranger in the Vietnam delta in the late 1960s."The best training I ever had for becoming a CIO was the time I spent as a gung ho airborne infantry officer," Carrow is fond of saying

By automating its collection of inspection data, Michigan's Department of Transportation cut the cost of building roads and bridges.

The Michigan Department of Transportation's FieldManager system for managing road and bridge construction projects gives taxpayers more value for their money by reducing administrative overhead. The system, deployed in May 1999, has helped the department cope with a budget for construction projects that has tripled from $500 million a year to $1.5 billion a year since 1993, while cutting its staff from 5,000 to 3,000. Road projects are completed more quickly too.

Dow Chemical's Web-based training delivery system, Learn@dow.now, saved the company $30 million in its first full year of operation and supported the company's reorganisation around global business units.

The marriage of IT and medical research may be just what traditional pharmaceutical companies need to survive in an increasingly competitive field.

If your company's stock is heading south, if profits have vanished and systems are sunk, who you gonna call? At Waste Management, they called Maury Myers and Tom Smith, and now they're glad they did.

We return to six businesses we profiled last year to see who is still standing and who has been kicked off E-Com Island.