Summary:
When evaluating and prioritizing legacy systems for replacement and investments funds, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is often under-estimated in business cases, skewing return on investment (ROI) calculations.
Capturing application, infrastructure & operating costs is difficult because of the volume, detail and complexity of budget and spending data
Risks (i.e. unsupported HW/SW, unmet cyber security measures), opportunity costs, and other intangibles need to be included in the ROI and business case
As-is business process estimates often omit costs associated with manual processes
Existing TCO resources developed for industry may not work without adaptation for government.
The PROJECT GOAL is to identify and leverage what exists (in industry and across gov), determine gaps, begin filling gaps; Goal of continued maturity and improvement of TCO/ROI leading to stronger business cases; ultimately better investment decisions for limited modernization funds.