The Costs Project Yes, I want to participate in the COSTS project!

A Short History of the COSTS Project
co-directors Karen Leach and David Smallen

In November of 1996, Steven Gilbert, moderator of the American Association for Higher Education's technology listserv, was experiencing a personal technology support crisis. His laptop computer was down for repairs, his office server was experiencing problems, and he found himself unable to function in the Internet world on which he depends. In a posting to the listserv, he wrote:  “As I've been suffering the effects of my own personal "support service crisis," I've realized that there are a lot of people who want the same thing I do. We want powerful, effective tools that are utterly reliable, available, and easy to use. … And we want the full costs associated with these capabilities and services to be highly predictable.” 

Based upon a “birds-of-a-feather” session at the1996 CAUSE conference, fifty people agreed to participate in a data collection effort to develop reasonable estimates of, and reasonable benchmarks for, the cost of delivering IT support services.  And thus, the COSTS project was born!

A year later, after Karen Leach and Dave Smallen presented preliminary results at the 1997 CAUSE conference, more than 100 institutions joined the project.

The project is organized around short- and long-term goals.

The short-term goals of the project are:

·        Identify and understand examples of IT services at institutions of higher education.

·        Develop ranges for the unit costs of providing IT services based on institutional characteristics.

·        Test simple hypotheses about the unit costs of providing IT services.

The long-term goals are:

·        Identify a core of IT services that should be common to most institutions of higher education.

·        Identify exemplars for each IT service, that is, institutional approaches that deliver exceptionally high levels of service at identified cost levels.

·        Develop benchmarks that are useful for comparing the costs of providing IT services among various institutional categories.

·        Determine components of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for desktop computer equipment in higher education.

  We first approached data collection and analysis one service at a time. Identification of twelve core IT services was the cornerstone of the COSTS effort. These are IT services that every school provides in some way.  For example, we developed a survey for hardware repair services, and then tried to get as many participants to complete the survey from as many different kinds of institutions as possible.  We promised fast turnaround and only provided the data to those who submitted the survey.

When we analyzed the data we focused on important ratios, such as cost per computer, computers per support staff, and users per support staff. We also determined that we would look at the “middle 50%” of the data – from the 25^th to 75^th percentile, which we call the “typical” range for a ratio. This would allow schools to see themselves within a typical band, instead of as an absolute placement or ranking.

  While many people appreciated the “by service” approach because it came in smaller bites, we heard many concerns that people did not know how to divide up their expenses without seeing the whole.  So, in 1999, we decided to go for the whole enchilada and create a comprehensive survey that would deal with all services at one time.  The survey collected both institutional and IT variables.  The resulting data analyses provided real insight into IT services and were readily customizable by school.

  From this experience we also began to examine what stood in the way of more schools participating and what parts of the data participants found most useful. The length and breadth of the survey was a barrier.  Many schools reported that it did not actually take as long as anticipated to fill out the survey.   Other  people who were eager for data and analyses,  gave up on completing the survey in the press of daily business.  Seeking guidance we partnered with the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) (IT leaders from 59 selective institutions) to create a revised survey that is shorter and more focused on a critical set of information. Leaders from the CLAC schools in information technology, institutional research, and finance worked together to design the current survey.  It focuses on comprehensive and critical data that helps planners to understand long-term trends.  We expect to work with COSTS participants to do an in-depth analysis of one essential IT core service per year as well. 

  In the last four years the co-directors have made numerous presentations about the COSTS project at national meetings of EDUCAUSE, CAUSE, NACUBO, EACUBO, CLAC, and others, and have authored articles in professional journals. Institutions are eager for data and comparative analyses and enthusiasm for the project has grown over time.  Collaboration among institutions of higher education is a great strength, and the COSTS project is an example of an effort where collaboration can lead to improvements for all participants.

Articles and Presentations

Understanding Our IT Investments: Slides from the presentation of 1999 and 2000 project results at the CIC IT Workshop, March 29, 2001.

A Bird's-Eye View of IT Costs: Without the Wizardry: Slides from the presentation of project results at the CAUSE 98 Conference, December 1998.

Article in CAUSE/EFFECT: Summary of results and a full description of the project .

Here is a link to a presentation given at the ASCUE Conference in June, 1998. The artwork in the presentation is used with the kind permission of Sandy Andrews and the young children in her classes at the Carminati Elementary School in Tempe, Arizona. They are the creators of the Seamonkey Oz Home Page.

December, 1997 conference paper on the COSTS project. Here are the slides showing the first results on the project presented at the CAUSE conference in December, 1997.