The Center for Digital Government recently released a white paper, Cutting the Cost of Government – Uniting Finance and Technology for Innovation (pdf), that discusses how strategic technology capital planning can have a positive return on investment for government.
The report cites case studies from government IT managers and ‘introduces six approaches that blend finance and operational policy together to enable smarter investment in information technology:’
- Shared Service Chargeback Model
- Shift Capital Costs to Operating Expenses
- Financing the Entire Project, Including Services and Installation
- Deferring Payment
- Tax Exempt Financing
- End of Year Budget Optimization
Excerpt:
“Smart policy isn’t just about cutting IT costs, although that is certainly a worthwhile goal. Our goal – the goal of all information technology – is to deliver performance gains in the rest of the organization. Properly applied, IT will cut costs for case workers, managers, analysts, executives and nearly all of the job functions that are so greatly stressed in these tough times. With these innovative techniques, we are all one step closer to doing just that.”
