In response to cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis of educational technology, I looked at many websites, I found two that were of particular interest to me.

The first is at:
http://www.unl.ac.uk/tltc/elt/elt1.htm

It the ELT Report No.1, that lists different steps in the evaluation process when looking at new technologies. It was written at and for the University of Northern Ireland, and focuses on frameworks for evaluating the use of educational technology. The five evaluative roles are described are:

Formative evaluations
Summative evaluations
Illuminative evaluations
Integrative evaluations
Quality Assurance

I have bookmarked this site because it gave me information on where to start in evaluate cost-effectiveness and brought to my attention all five ways of collecting data.

The second site I found useful was:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~ipct-j/1998/n3-4/geer.html#costs

It is posted by the IPCT, Interpersonal Computing and Technology Journal, and details specific start up costs for hardware, software and maintenance of a school website. The site has given averages on how much it costs per student to develop the site at schools, and divides the budget up into percentages where money should be allocated for successful implementation and maintenance.
There are seven areas to consider when looking at the cost of your school's system. They are:

Computational/Processing power
Software, both operating systems and applications
Data
System design, including decision making, configuration, and research
Data storage
Telecommunications hardware and channels
Overhead, including supervision, administration, and facilities (p. 82)

All sections of this article were designed to give the decisional manager guidance for costing out the components of a web site, and had simple information that would aid in your designing efforts.

Leann Walker