With the recovering economy, it seems that the folks in IT are envisioning an improved outlook for their ability to spend — if not with abandon — at least without the trepidation of recent years.

While spending by IT groups hasn’t fully recovered yet, a majority are reportingboosted budgets for 2012.

A new report from the folks at TechRepublic and ZDNet shows that the priorities of IT groups include more than just hanging on and containing costs. There’s a definite aura of optimism among IT pros, who plan to spend on using technology to improve business, as opposed to keeping the organization alive.

Check out these highlights:

• More than twice as many organizations report increased IT budgets in 2011 as report budget decreases
• 38.7% of organizations say their IT budgets have increased. Compare that to just 16.7% reporting lower budgets. 44.6% say their budgets year- on-year were flat
• Over 20% of organizations report budget increases of more than 10%
• The top three IT priorities are improving business process and efficiency (a “top priority” or “major priority” for 69.1% of businesses), aligning IT priorities with business growth (61.1%) and increasing overall productivity with new technologies (59.5%)
• The larger the business, the more focused they are on lowering IT infrastructure costs. 66.2% of the largest businesses (>500 staff) are lowering IT infrastructure costs, but this proportion declines for smaller companies until it represents only 44.4% of the smallest businesses (1-49 staff)
• Government organizations are far more intent on cutting overall IT costs (70%) than others.