The measurement system produces a form of a return on investment figure. Instead of a strict division of income by investment, it assigns monetary value to such benefits as citizen access to public offices. With agencies required to address such issues as staffing and ongoing maintenance, the ROI measurement is designed to give the governor and legislature more consistent information than they've had in the past.
"The traditional process is that the agencies that do the best sales job with the budget office and the legislature get the appropriations for technology projects," says Cynthia Eisenhauer, Iowa's budget chief. "The sales job often relies on bells and whistles and statements like `being first in the country.
Under the ROI system so far, enterprise-wide infrastructure projects, such as a statewide data warehouse, have tended to fare better than stand-alone projects, such as a vocational rehabilitation case management system.
The IT Department and an advisory panel use ROI submissions from requesting agencies to make funding recommendations to the governor, who will include tech projects in his budget proposal to the legislature.
