For a long time, corporate leaders didn't question this spending because it was viewed as nondiscretionary. But over the years, some maintenance budgets have come to include spending that should be listed under other headings, such as research and development or new projects. How much of that is the result of deception, mislabeling or misinterpretation isn't clear.

"Do people label enhancements and upgrades exactly the same way, every time, company to company? I don't think so. There's no bright line," says Joel D. Jacobs, deputy CIO at The Mitre Corp., a not-for-profit company with headquarters in Bedford, Mass., and McLean, Va., that provides technical and R&D support to the government.

Jacobs says Mitre saw its vague definition of maintenance as a problem and decided to do something about it.

Two years ago, Mitre changed its working vocabulary to enhance understanding between business and IT and get a better handle on how it was spending its money. Part of that change was to break the IT budget into more-accurate headings. Mitre had once used "operations," "maintenance" and "development," then "frontier work," "utility" and "productivity" as IT budget headings. Now the labels are "nondiscretionary," "core services" and "initiatives/service enhancements." (Jacobs says there's still some discussion on whether that third category should be separated into two.)

Jacobs stresses that Mitre focused on more than just vocabulary. Business and IT leaders looked at what was to be included under each item. "We have to have a collective agreement about what it means," he says.