Is IT outsourcing right for you? For one government, the common decision about whether or not to outsource information technology services led to uncommon improvements in IT operations.(Solutions)(Information Technology)

Technology outsourcing has been a topic of great interest to a number of organizations over the last few years, and has even been a hot topic in the popular media lately. Given this level of interest, many governments are evaluating how they might use outsourcing to deliver better information technology services to both internal and external customers. However, outsourcing is not a decision to be made lightly, as it has important implications for labor relations, service levels, and cost structure. Confronting this very decision, one county government in Texas engaged GFOA to assist with the analysis.

One of the first decisions made by the county and GFOA was to approach the project as an overall IT evaluation, rather than strictly as an outsourcing/in-sourcing decision. This ensured that the project team would consider a more comprehensive set of information and solutions than just outsourcing.

The project team gathered data from a number of sources, including the following:

* Interviews and surveys of IT staff

* End user satisfaction survey

* Department head satisfaction survey and focus groups

* Interviews with elected officials