Plato's Republic Redux (cont.)

Public-sector organizations find new tools for quantifying the benefits of their IT investments

Another issue is staff efficiency. In 2003 a virus attack infected more than half of the county government's computers. The IT staff spent three days detecting and removing the programs, prompting the county to reevaluate its virus-protection software.

After using Symantec AntiVirus Enterprise Edition for a month, the county recorded a significant drop in virus-related disruptions compared to its old anti-virus software. "Overall, we've seen a 50 percent reduction every month, which is very good," Yang says. Since 2004, the county has avoided any virus-related disruptions and costly interventions.

Jason Gunnoe, chief information security officer with the state of Tennessee, compares outcomes and best practices with peers from other states through the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), a security-focused association for state and local governments. "We have discussions about how to develop metrics for security, and then we grade ourselves on those things," Gunnoe says.

According to Gunnoe, state IT reviews rely mainly on professional judgment calls for security matters, unlike commercial organizations that apply accounting measurements. Gunnoe's team gathers a variety of data, including the cost to the state of each IT department outage and how long it takes to recover. The team uses this information to perform "what-if" scenarios to calculate potential benefits, which helps the state create cost-benefit analyses for future projects.

Noting that the Symantec AntiVirus Enterprise Edition is widely deployed in the state, Gunnoe says it has proven valuable because the software has saved Tennessee "several million dollars in resource costs to rebuild infected machines" over many years. To measure the software's value, "we can produce real ROI figures to support the continued investment," he adds.

Gunnoe admits that not every aspect of a large-scale IT project can be quantified by financial statistics: "Some initiatives require you to say, 'This is what we want to do based on the best judgment of our team and our past experiences.'"

A long-term view

The U.K. town of Luton, about 30 miles north of London, is implementing a multi-year project dubbed "T-Government," for "transformation government." The initiative is working to take Web-based information distribution to a new level. In addition to being able to access government forms and records online, citizens will soon be completing the forms from their Web browsers. "Everything from reporting abandoned vehicles and stray dogs to filling out tax forms and taxi driver's license applications will be done online," says Chris Kadwill, head of information and communications technology operations. Kadwill's team manages about 3,000 desktops and 300 laptops.