Measuring Return on Government IT Investments

Recently there have been many attempts to understand and measure the returns from information technology (IT) investments in public sector. Initially, most of the methodologies and models were based on traditional financial models. However, assessing the returns on government investments in IT poses important practical and research challenges. Scholars and practitioners that have embarked in IT assessment activities have encountered numerous difficulties which, to a large extent, remain as pending issues. Some examples include the intangibility of the benefits generated, the time at which benefits can be measured, and the crosssectional nature of information technologies. The primary purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis and describe the similarities and differences of different approaches, models and methodologies developed for evaluating ROI in public sector. Thus, the paper will be informed by an extensive review of the fragmented research and analyses of IT evaluation and different elements of IT evaluation in public sector.