Under increasing pressure to tighten corporate budgets a new trend has emerged: CIOs are grouping together in private executive forums to tackle tough business decisions in a bid to survive the current economic downturn.

Global 2000 IT executives are forming the Technology Leadership Council in the US next month with plans to extend the group to the rest of the world including Australia later in the year.

Aimed at corporate CIOs and high-level IT executives who deal with vendor selection, leadership practices, ROI analysis and outsourcing, the group will tackle issues surrounding the alignment of IT with business.

Gartner CIO Bart Stanco will present a case study at the group's inaugural meeting on October 30; details are available at http://www.hm-grp.com.

In order to help each other grapple with budget, vendor and leadership problems, Stanco said "practitioners like to hear from other practitioners".

Pointing to a heightened interest by Australian CIOs in peer group forums, Gartner research director Dr Marianne Broadbent told Computerworld there are 150 IT professionals currently participating in Gartner's Asia-Pacific Executive Program and nearly two-thirds are from Australia.

"We held a meeting in Sydney last week which was attended by 50 high level CIOs; there is a real interest in seeking out expertise on tough issues," she said.

"A highlight of the forum was a panel of four CIOs talking about their experience with external service providers."

Worldwide, there are a total of 1500 CIOs participating in the executive program and plans to establish the Technology Leadership Council are being organised by US-based consultancy Hunter Management Group. - Marc Ferranti contributed to this article