The Wisconsin Division of Vocational Rehabilitation uses stand-alone personal computers to support field office operations, with no linkage to the agency central computer facility. The Minnesota Rehabilitation Agency uses IBM personal computers in the field offices networked to its central computer facility through a statewide administrative telecommunications network. This allows sophisticated data management tasks as well as access to agency data for several previous years. Each of the approaches used by these agencies supports the information needs of the counselors and administrators but creates radically different implications of how such a support capability is established and supported. Basically, one would measure the effectiveness and efficiency of total MIS performance.
Effectiveness is the degree to which system objectives are achieved.
Efficiency is the degree to which utilization of resources is minimized to achieve an objective. One could be very efficient by achieving the wrong goals at low cost. It is better to be effective but inefficient than to be highly efficient in reaching the wrong objectives. Or, one could divide the MIS into functional subsystems such as strategic planning information system, managerial control information system, operations information system, etc. and perform an evaluation based upon criteria established for each of the subsystems. Another approach to evaluation would be to conduct a cost-benefit analysis.