Technology.

• Author: Field, Tom
• Position: From the Library - Excerpt from CIO, outsourcing information technology operations - Brief Article - Excerpt

"You Can't Outsource City Hall"

Tom Field

CIO, June 15, 2002

When San Diego County inked a seven-year, $644 million contract two years ago with a vendor consortium that would assume responsibility for the county's information technology operations, the pundits hailed the deal as the future of government IT. Outsourcing, they said, would make government faster, more efficient, and more e-businesslike. Now that the two principals behind the deal have moved on and the two sides are wrangling over costs, service levels, and a late ERP rollout, the future of IT outsourcing in the public sector is much less certain. In fact, some now say the dream of across-the-board outsourcing of state and local government IT is just that--a dream with little hope of ever coming true. Indeed, outsourcing activity has come to a screeching halt in the public sector, partly because of the recession but mostly because of the failed...