Framework Guidelines to Measure the Impact of Business Intelligence and Decision Support Methodologies in the Public Sector

Public Administrations started exploiting decision support systems (DSS) only in (very) recent times with respect to the private sector where such systems have been used for long time to improve decision making activities (e.g. the DSS and Business Intelligence realm). Service efficiency and effectiveness improvement are the expected results of DSS exploitation, together with increased value for stakeholders. The adoption of DSS in the public sector raises some questions: how to identify the areas where DSS introduction could greatly improve service quality and how to measure the resulting added value? The paper will provide a literature review supporting the authors in identifying the key factors influencing DSS value generation in the public sector. An evaluation model will be sketched including a detailed set of dimensions. This paper aims at providing the ground for building an evaluation methodology for assessing DSS adoption and exploitation in the context of public sector and public service provision.