Abstract—These days information technology (IT) is well known for the critical role it plays in earning and sustaining competitive advantage, and also for yielding a myriad of intangible benefits that are hard to quantify. If an investment in IT is aimed at improving services in the public sector, then the chances of running into intangibles are much higher. After all, voters’ support, spontaneous media exposure, pressure-groups’ reactions, public security and people’s well-being are common concerns in the conception and deployment of government ideas and projects. This paper presents a method that facilitates the evaluation of IT investments in the public sector. The method enables public officers to maximize the appropriation of the intangible benefits yielded by the investments they make in IT.

Index Terms—IT investment analysis, intangible benefits, public sector, value-based software engineering.

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Cite: Antonio Juarez Alencar, Rigel Proc´opio Fernandes, Eber Assis Schmitz, Alexandre Luis Correa, "Maximizing the Appropriation of the Intangible Benefits Yielded by IT Investments in the Public Sector," Journal of Software vol. 8, no. 7, pp. 1537-1549, 2013.