Christopher Rence Chief Information and Business Transformation Officer, FICO

How long at current company: Since 2004, when I began as VP and CIO.

Decision I wish I could do over: I wish we had pushed green IT sooner, because it has proven to be an important step in streamlining the costs and environmental impact of business technology.

Advice for future CIOs: The future starts today. Embrace innovation, lay out a road map, and ensure that leadership knows that it will need to be flexible to adjust to the unknown.

Best way for CIOs to cope with the economic downturn: Many CIOs will consider making decisions that offer an immediate impact on their businesses' expenses, but the best CIOs will be mindful not to make decisions that have short-term benefits for which they'll pay greatly later.

The federal government's top technology priority should be ... The real value of technology to our nation's economy and competitiveness lies in the information it handles and how we make best use of it. Otherwise, technology is no more than expensive sets of wires, chips, and screens. Our national technology policy must call for the widespread adoption of analytics as a core tool for making sound decisions.

The next big thing for my industry will be ... dynamic processing. Over the next few years, the industry will sort out the cloud and grid computing. CIOs and CTOs need to embrace this technology now. This doesn't mean that they need to make expensive investments in technology; it's more about acutely considering these emerging technologies when making decisions about new applications and tools.

IT budget: $190 million

Size of IT team: 200

Top initiatives:

>> FICO is investing in the next generation of virtualization hardware and software, in addition to data center environmental updates. This lets us continue to reduce our carbon footprint and increase operational efficiencies while lowering operational costs. In parallel, we're piloting a next phase in the reduction of paper printing by 50% in our campuses. We're doing this by leveraging our productivity tools such as online communities.

>> Another initiative for this year is to maximize FICO employees' efficiency. We'll be expanding our thin-client technology model, providing employees with great flexibility to deliver solutions from anywhere.

>> Finally, I hope to contribute to next-generation technology development by deploying leading technology innovations at FICO. I plan to do this by increasing the R&D teams' ability to bring products to market through greater flexibility in tool access and a greater set of standard tools and services.

How I measure IT effectiveness: We measure IT effectiveness in how it impacts our business operations, our personal work environment, and our environmental footprint. We aim to have IT decisions make our business run more efficiently.

Leisure activities: Antique automobile enthusiast

Favorite president: Richard Nixon understood global economics and that all countries are dependent on each other

Tech vendor I respect most: Joe Tucci of EMC

Last vacation: Hawaii

Best book read recently: China Inc., by Ted C. Fishman

If I weren't a CIO, I'd be ... a geek at some level or another