Cornwall chokes on £300m local gov deal with IT kingpins Cornwall Council has stalled a £300m ten-year deal to outsource its call centres and other IT systems to the private sector. The county's councillors voted 93-0, with seven abstentions, to put the brakes on the contract, snubbing BT and CSC which had each put in bids for the huge cash pot. The move came after 6,000 people …
Would that be 1043 jobs created in Cornwall, in which case no net creation, or a 1043 jobs created in India, in which case a net loss of 1000 jobs?
At the end of the day councils exist to provide public service and economic stability/enhancment of their local area, not to balance spreadsheets or employ offshore workers.
I recently had to sort out some matters between my other half and her council. Their switchboard/helpline goes straight through to a call centre 300 miles away. WTF? How is that helping their local economy?
I normal despise local councils due to their inherent wasting of money on new council offices every few years, free 'news' papers and a love of street furniture.
However, this is a most pleasing result.
There needs to be more local cooperatives allowed to be involved in these types of deals. I would rather work for one of those than being TUPEd into another corporate blackhole.
So, BT was going to save £5million and create over 1000 new jobs? What kind of mathematics is that? One of Scotland's biggest public sector bodies learned the hard way that BT contracts sometimes do not add up to their promises: http://www.dgstandard.co.uk/dumfries-news/scottish-news/2012/10/24/bt-blamed-for-it-contract-failure-51311-32097046/
The problem with your supposition is that the inefficiencies are in the the delivery portion of the exchange when its usually that the commissioning body has no idea what they want or what can be done. What outsourcing gives you is:
costs + profits + inefficiencies + Repeat(costs to change it all just as delivery is due + profits on that) while plug not pulled = £N = outsourced public services
That's the first time I've heard of a local council doing something positive and listening to what the local populous was saying.
There again, I'm from Sheffield, we get what we're given and like it because the majority of the population vote the same way every time, regardless of what the idiots on the council have done over the previous 4 years (or decades in this case) then moan when nothing changes or the council screw it up as usual. FFS
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Best news I've heard this month.
Why is a company that's allegedly not paid its faire share of tax, been the subject of SEC fraud investigations in the last 12 months, and allegedly been involved in arranging rendition flights, shortlisted as a contractor for public sector contracts?
And that's before consideration of numerous recent failures to meet customer requirements in the UK.
I don't believe the council/BT's spin either.
There's no way the plans can save money AND create jobs (in Cornwall, apparently) AND make BT a profit, unless they're admitting that the council is so hopeless at running these services in the first place - in which case, are they competent enough to figure out how to contract it out to a telco with an IT arm?
If you look at the Chief Exec's LinkedIn profile, you will see that among other posts, he was the CEO of "Serco Solutions" (okay, maybe that means he knows how to get a good outsourcing deal) but also the "Director of Local and Regional Government" at a company called "BT". Hmm....
My experience with BT as an outsourcing 'partner' is long tale of misery and woe. Frankly, they couldn't organise a cost effective drink in a bar without a team of five project managers and charging for every single one.
It's cheaper and more effective to do it your self. At least the council would be in control of the service and could make changes to it. BT would freeze it into a contract and nothing would ever improve.
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