IS outsourcing by public sector organisations

摘要

IS outsourcing is an innovative organisational tool for IS management in both private and public sector organisations. Following the privatisation trend in the late 1980s, a number of government IS departments were privatised. It is now realised that total privatisation is not always sensible, and less rigorous forms of privatisation are proposed. Case studies of IS outsourcing in a number of (former) public sector organisations have revealed that public sector information systems are often very critical, complex and volatile, due to the information intensity of the processes and the nature of political decision making. This makes outsourcing less attractive. Outsourcing was sometimes chosen to circumvent inflexibilities in the public sector accounting system and compensation rules. These reasons for outsourcing have recently been alleviated.