IT Outsourcing in the Public Sector: A Descriptive Framework from a Literature Review

ABSTRACT

Despite its economic scale, IT outsourcing (ITO) in the public sector (PS) has not yet been deeply analyzed by academic literature when compared with ITO focused on the private sector. In fact, the question has often been raised as to whether ITO in the PS should be regarded as completely different to ITO in the private sector. In order to contribute to this discussion, our first goal in this paper is, after a review of the academic literature, to summarize the covered topics in a descriptive framework that facilitates the understanding both for researchers and practitioners of the ITO phenomena in the Public Sector. This framework is organized in four main categories that explain the context (the features of the PS) and the rationale of the ITO process (Why, What and How) in the PS. Then, we use this framework to face our second goal: highlight to which extent differences in ITO process between the public and private sectors are clear and can impact upon the implementation of the ITO. Although the conclusions indicate that there are quite a number of points of coincidence, partly because both sectors have organizations with a certain degree of publicness, they also reflect some aspects that are intrinsic to the PS (as the prioritization of non-economistic values, the application of industrial policies, or the search of collaborative sourcing, among others) and which need to be borne in mind in any work tackling ITO in this context.

KEYWORDS:

• IT outsourcing
• public sector
• public-private sector differences
• descriptive framework
• literature review

Acknowledgments

The authors are also deeply grateful to professors Santi Caballé and Robert Clarisó for their extremely helpful scientific guidance in the design of the final version of this paper.

Notes

1. The idea of Degree of Publicness was presented by Antonsen & Jorgensen in 1997, based on the work of Bozeman & Brestchneider of 1994. Antonsen & Jorgensen highlight that Bozeman and Brestchneider presented “two approaches to distinguishing between the public and private sectors: the core and dimensional approaches”. In the second approach, it is said “that some government organizations are more public than others”. This idea of level or degree is that which Antonsen & Jorgensen detailed 3 years later with the following explanation “The dimensional approach assumes the difference between public and private is a matter of degree; publicness is both a behavioural category, not a legal one, and multi-dimensional.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia under Grant 2014 SGR 1534; and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under Grant TRA2013-48180-C3-3-P;Departament d’Innovació, Universitats i Empresa, Generalitat de Catalunya [2014 SGR 1534];European Regional Development Fund [TRA2013-48180-C3-3-P];Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [TRA2013-48180-C3-3-P].

Notes on contributors

Josep M. Marco-Simó

Josep M. Marco-Simó is Associate Professor at UOC Computing, Multimedia and Telecommunication Studies since 2001 and holds a Ph.D. in Information Society. He has been the academic director of the Degree in Computer Engineering, the Postgraduate program in IT Project Management and currently of the Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering. He develops his teaching and research activity in the field of Management Information Systems and focuses in the study of the provision processes of Information Technology, Systems and Services as well as in the selection practices of ISST providers, with special interest in the case of the public sector.

Joan A. Pastor-Collado

Joan A. Pastor-Collado is Professor at Barcelona-Tech and currently is Vice-Dean for Institutional and International Relations. His research focus on understanding and providing solutions to the main professional problems in the fields of the strategic management, administration and engineering of information-intensive systems and services in public and private organisations. He has carried out intense collective work and publishing activities on business information systems (ERP, CRM, SCM, EAI) and on the services associated with them (acquisition, implementation and evolution). He has worked and published also on higher-level training in written communication skills for ICT professionals. He also specifically works on the most appropriate research methods for investigating the group’s research problems (case studies, action-research, grounded theory, design science research, PLS) and their combination, placing special emphasis on considering these methods in the provision of ICT services and in the design and innovative curricular deployment of new ICT undergraduate and postgraduate studies and in other higher education levels.