Government

BASCS Business Case Template

Here are a number of things to consider when you are developing a business case for your BASCS implementation. Your written case could include the following:

Title Page

Make a title page for your document that includes the name of your project (eg A Case for implementation of the Business Activity Structure Classification System (BASCS); your department's name, the date and version number, and indicate that it has been prepared by.

Executive Summary

Provide a brief overview of the problem you are addressing, trends that support BASCS implementations, and your solution path.

Problem Statements

Make a series of clear statements about the problems or challenges being faced by your department in the area of Information Management. Explain each problem statement further, making sure to address areas such as time, costs, quality of service to the public, accountability, and governance or comptrollership issues. It may be helpful to extract some of the concepts from this BASCS Guide to help articulate your problem statements.

Solution Path

Describe your proposed solution, and indicate a clear set of steps and milestones to achieve your desired outcome. Make sure to reference each problem statement with your proposed solution path.

Benefits

Describe some of the benefits of good IM, as well as the specific benefits of BASCS implementation. Once again, it may be helpful to extract some of the concepts from this BASCS Guide to help describe trends in Information Management. Another excellent document that you can refer to in building your business case for BASCS implementations is the "Case for Action for an Information Management Strategy for the Government of Canada", available on Library and Archives Canada's website under Information Management Publications. Make sure to reference each problem statement with your benefits statements.

Required Resources

Provide a list of required resources, including human resources, contract resources. Show associated costs/budgets, with a project total.

Project Timelines

Describe high-level project timelines and key milestones. Include key communications and training milestones as well as implementation milestones.

Notes about Business Case Preparation

Treasury Board offers these general notes in support of business case preparation:

• The business case should always be presented in terms of expected benefits, costs (or savings) and risk; any disassociation of these three concepts could be misleading.
• A strong, unambiguous rationale should result from the business case in order to support the decision to change the method of program delivery.
• The complete life cycle of the initiative should be considered in developing the business case when there is a finite time period.
• The business case should analyze more than one alternative. This should include an analysis of potential innovative organizational arrangements for service delivery within the proponent's existing organization.
• New programs should be assessed with respect to the objectives, expected benefits, and costs of delivering them within an existing organizational structure in addition to considering the establishment of a new organization.
• The business case should identify and assess the associated risk with new program delivery proposals and present a strategy for managing the risk to ensure that program objectives are realized.

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