How will the General Election impact on IT outsourcing services?

Advice 2010-03-26 16:38

With everyone expecting drastic cost-cutting measures, Ferenc Szelenyi assesses the role of IT in outsourcing for the

As the UK General Election looms large, the main political parties are yet to set out a coherent plan to cut the £178bn national deficit.

Saving money
The current UK government expenditure now stands at around £680bn a year, of which only around £80bn worth of activity is outsourced. Currently, much of that spending is at a local level, but it is my view that this should eventually be spread across national government sectors. With every sector currently looking to reduce their operating costs, it is apparent that IT outsourcing has crucial part to play.

This is because currently, organisations in the public sector are looking to maintain services as best they can while recognising that there will be less money. Therefore, outsourcing is an ideal fit. Personally speaking, whoever takes over the key to number 10 this year should be more concerned with commissioning the right outsourcing services rather than taking tasks on themselves.

Therefore, managers in the public sector should turn to IT outsourcing at a time when improving efficiency and cutting costs is imperative. A successful outsourcing strategy provides a medium to long-term solution, which can not only deliver the necessary cost savings to ease the burden of the current deficit, but also provide improved operational efficiency and access to specialist skills and technology. This allows any new or existing government to focus on core (in-house) activities. But just what are these services and how can government sectors best take advantage of them?

Releasing the pressure
If you take IT services as a prime example, an outsourcing service provider is better placed than a government body to transfer paper to electronic records, having already made the investment in the required technical equipment, training and skills. These are assets that government departments simply do not posses in house. Therefore, outsourcing these services enables them to transfer the processes to a supplier who has a stronger ability in handling them, while allowing the public sector to concentrate on its core responsibilities.

Healthcare is a prime example of a sector that is always being asked to fulfill the escalating needs of the patient, not to mention having to comply with the ever-changing government rules and regulations. A change in power could potentially increase these headaches, as any new party is likely to make changes to stamp their authority early on. Therefore, every health care service should look to grow with the ever-changing technology in order to provide high quality health care services and therefore survive in the exceedingly competitive market.

One possible way is if the industry adopts health care IT outsourcing. As the health care industry has to continually deal with the mission critical information, highly important data and high network connectivity, the challenges could be outsourced to a specialist services provider.