The Shared Service Survey results indicate that the 1,789 respondents (a subset of more than 3,700 local political subdivisions) have a total of 14,842 computer servers. From this, the total statewide quantity could be estimated between 15,000 and 25,000 servers. Assuming a cost of $4,000 per server, a four-year replacement cost for servers alone is between $60 and $100 million.

The Office of Information Technology, Ohio Department of Administrative Services is interested in pursuing shared service arrangements with education and local government partners. Specific opportunities for technology services include: shared servers/infrastructure, data center activities/migration, VoIP, networking efforts, virtualization and e-mail including governance and procurement processes. The department is in the process of developing a detailed Service Catalog for all of OIT.

School and government IT acquisition costs can be reduced through collaborative development and adoption of technology standards for commodity IT purchases and through sharing end-use device management.

Depending on the size of the environment, the number of end-users, quantity and type of endpoint devices, sub-entities should be encouraged to aggregate their end-point device support, at a minimum, at the entity level. Entities without sufficient size to maintain full-time staff to support end-point management across their environment are encouraged to consider a regional service provider to manage their end-point devices, on-site or remotely.

Software and web development management costs can be reduced through joint ownership and collaborative design.

Information technology centers, educational service centers, county auditors and county recorders and county clerks all report that they provide application development, database administration and application support services to schools or local government.

The Auditor of the State's office created the Uniform Accounting Network (UAN) software to support financial management activities of local governments. This software, along with computer equipment and technical support provided by UAN, makes it easy for public officials to apply required accounting standards to their financial record keeping. At present, more than 1,700 Ohio townships, villages, public libraries and special districts are using UAN in their daily operations.