RETURN ON INVESTMENT ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION WARFARE SYSTEMS

Lieutenant Commander Cesar Rios wrote his Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Masters' thesis RETURN ON INVESTMENT ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION WARFARE SYSTEMS which generated a great deal of discussion and additional writing/analysis in the acquisition and research communities. His case study on the Cryptologic Carry-On Program (CCOP) is featured in the book MODELING RISK. LCDR Brian Prevo, the OPNAV N2 Sponsor for CCOP, asked for the assessment. Lots of great collaboration between OPNAV and NPS.

Thesis Topic: Millions of dollars are spent each year on quick reaction capability (QRC) Information Warfare (IW) and intelligence collection systems. These information technology (IT) systems are used to fill existing capability gaps at the Fleet, theater and strategic level. Managing these portfolios of equipment as an investment requires that program managers be able to maximize the benefits of the systems in a systematic manner while considering the impact of cost throughout the enterprise.

To successfully accomplish this task, it is essential to develop a means and methodology to measure the performance of the IT investments in an objective manner. As of yet, no acceptable measure of their performance or benefit has been developed to determine whether the systems are yielding an adequate level of performance or return on investment (ROI).

RETURN ON INVESTMENT ANALYSIS OF
INFORMATION WARFARE SYSTEMS
by
Cesar G. Rios, Jr.
September 2005

For more on this cryptologic/information warfare rockstar, you can read his case study in Modeling Risk: Applying Monte Carlo Simulation, Real Options Analysis, Forecasting, and Optimization Techniques (Wiley Finance) (Hardcover) $125.00 !!

Or, you can read his case study in the book for free HERE. It's in GoogleReader.

You can read more about his study HERE.

LCDR Cesar Rios' important work led to additional study and research and the MBA PROFESSIONAL REPORT "The Concurrent Implementation of Radio Frequency Identification and Unique Item Identification at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, Indiana as a Model for a Navy Supply Chain Application" By: Ernan Obellos, Travis Colleran and Ryan Lookabill in December 2007.