What is Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA)

In this chapter, a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model is proposed to be used by the agencies of the Chilean public sector when evaluating alternatives for the implementation of e-government. This TCO model is used to compare the pros and cons of solutions that require high levels of investment at start up and low long-term operations expenditures against solutions that require lower start up investments and higher operational costs. It considers all the associated costs and investments of a candidate technological solution, under an integral assessment approach. This work shows how to gather all the information that is required to analyze and determinate the feasibility of a migration project. Since e-government projects are primarily driven by the goal of delivering better services to citizens, it is recommended to deal with these projects case-by-case and to take into account the quality of the resulting service to citizen, before deciding about their viability.