سیاست دولت، ارزش عمومی و برون سپاری فناوری اطلاعات: مورد استراتژیک

The paper examines government IT outsourcing polices. The paper critiques the concept of ‘the Contract State’, and suggests how more disciplined uses of outsourcing can assist the creation of public value, more broadly conceived. Within the context of international developments, we study the United Kingdom Inland Revenue (IR), Customs and Excise (HMRC) and Department of Social Security (DSS) and their IT outsourcing contracts. The evidence suggests that outsourcing and marketization initiatives have adverse public value impacts, and may need to be rethought. Major IT operations and innovations, for example e-government, National Health Service (NHS) and identity card IT policies in the UK, are managed and generate legacies that do not always make efficient and effective use of the market. Moreover, their objectives, implementation and management over time may truncate their value to the public at large. Applying a revised Public Value policy approach offers a richer perspective to guide central government decisions worldwide about future IT outsourcing.

In the private sector the major international trend towards Information Technology (IT) outsourcing from the early 1990s through to 2012 has been driven by a range of financial, business, technical and micro-political factors (Clark et al., 1995, Kern and Willcocks, 2001, Lacity and Hirschheim, 1993, Lacity et al., 2010, McLellan et al., 1995 and Willcocks et al., 2006). The research suggests that three main drivers seem to have been operating (Lacity and Willcocks, 2009, Willcocks et al., 1995a and Willcocks et al., 1995b). First, IT outsourcing is often a response to the hype and publicity surrounding the subject. A bandwagon effect leads to senior managers asking: ‘why don’t we outsource IT?’ Second, outsourcing has been a response to tough economi and competitive climates and the need to cut, or at least control costs. This has become a particularly pertinent issue in the 2008–2012 period, including for public sectors (Willcocks et al., 2011). Third, it can be conceived as part of a larger and longer term change in how organizations are structured and managed – part of what we would call a move towards the ‘contractual organization’. Government IT policies have been intermittently informed by the assumption (often characterized as a New Public Management (NPM) assumption) that the digitalization of the public sector will allow reform of public administration (PA) along the lines of private sector business and organizational management techniques. E-Government, outsourcing and cloudsourcing projects are intrinsically embedded in ensembles of political reforms and organizational changes to enact, support, and push a transformation in how public sectors function. IT has, in fact, become one of the most common resources drawn upon to standardize work procedures and smooth information flows, and to make more efficient organizational procedures. Information technologies have also become a common solution for increasing transparency and accountability, and to underpin a move to a service (and self-service) approach, introduce market-like coordination mechanisms, and support outsourcing (Ciborra, 1993 and Malone et al., 1987). What is interesting is the juxtaposition of IT – presented, rhetorically at least, as a vital strategic tool for government – and the degree to which it has been outsourced.

We point to a less than thought through move to IT marketization and outsourcing throughout UK central government departments across the 1990–2012 period. The paper suggests how more disciplined uses of outsourcing, learning from private and public sector experiences alike, can assist the performance of government agencies. Major outsourcing and marketization initiatives also need to be rethought in the light of public value creation. We make this point in 2012 as the UK public sector looks to be gearing up to another major round of outsourcing, and even ‘cloud-sourcing,’ in order to manage down the cost of public services. Major IT operations and innovations, such as e-government, NHS and Identity policy, have generated legacies that do not make efficient use of market competition amongst providers to govern outsourcing contracts, and may well also have deleterious public value effects. In all this, one must question the degree to which successive governments have actually been alerted to the strategic nature of IT and IT outsourcing, and the strategic and public value implications of their IT sourcing decisions. One major lesson is that public sector outsourcing decisions need to be taken holistically and pragmatically and with a view to the long term and not in a manner which is theory or dogma driven. Too often, it seems, governments have provided ‘strategic IT’ rhetoric, but have treated IT as not only just an administrative tool, but also as a ‘fire-and-forget missile’. More informed policy making, and follow through on IT decision-making is needed within central government itself. A key part of a way forward is also rebuilding internal Departmental skills in terms of IT policy development and management capability, the latter translating into the ability to elicit and deliver on public values rather than on business requirements or short term cost savings. Until public administration can achieve high performance in public value creation, it will be (and demonstrably has been) high risk to go down the route of large-scale IT outsourcing. The NPM rhetoric has not only favoured outsourcing but also the denigration of bureaucratic structures and values, despite the fact that bureaucracies in specific concrete forms can be the rich repository for values, skills, efficiency and effectiveness, where supported by a distinctive public management ethos, and suitably supportive ITs for public value creation (Du Gay, 2005). We conclude, therefore, that attentive consideration of the public value created by government action, a rebalancing of outsourcing and in-house sourcing, and a reassessment of how flexible ITs could be deployed, would seem to be a useful counterweight to the rhetoric of progress, modernization, transformative ITs and new public management that has shaped public management practices over the last 20 years.