LHRIC > Inside Information > Outsourcing - The Diigo Meta page

• 26 Mar 08
  

  Reggie Ryan

  Is Outsourcing a Good Idea for Instructional Technology?

  management outsourcing

  • If a computer teacher spends 75% of his time resolving
    technical issues for his building, it shows up as a "shadow cost"
    because his salary is budgeted from the teaching staff line. Computer
    aids may be spending 50% of their time on technical support issues
    but they are budgeted from the instructional support line and become
    "shadow costs". In some buildings it is not unusual to have teachers
    who have become technology gurus in their colleagues eyes spend
    20% of their time resolving technical issues for teachers in nearby
    classrooms.

    
    

    Before a district can fairly consider performing
    a cost analysis of outsourcing technology support, it must come
    to terms with the true cost of in-house support.

  • Before making outsourcing decisions, schools and
    businesses must ask the same question, "What are our core competencies?"
    For most schools these core competencies are not cable engineering,
    networking architecture, telecommunications engineering, systems
    integration, hardware repair, network engineering, and software
    development.
  • 1 more annotations...

  • • The following is a list
      of tips for educators considering outsourcing:

      
      
      
      
      1. Develop an outsourcing strategy that minimizes the number of
         vendors you work with. The more vendors involved the more complex
         it is for you to manage and the more difficult it is for you to
         demand accountability.
         
         
         
         
      2. Diligently check every reference that is supplied by the vendor.
         Be sure they have enthusiastic referrals from other schools. Vendors
         tend to overstate their roles in technology projects. Never outsource
         to someone without verifying successful prior experience.
         
         
         
         
      3. Before beginning a partnership with a vendor, jointly develop
         and approve a list of functional outcomes and a timeline. These
         outcomes are the items that if completed in the period of time
         agreed upon will allow you to accept the work and say, "thank
         you". Many novices to outsourcing get caught up in creating
         detailed task lists. ( i.e. TCP/IP will be configured on every
         workstation, rather than stating every workstation will have high
         speed access to the Internet.) You should provide clearly stated
         outcomes and leave it to the vendor to worry about the tasks and
         resources necessary to achieve them.
         
         
         
         
      4. Be sure to develop a detailed service level agreement (SLA).
         This agreement needs to specify all the commitments the vendor
         is making to you and what will happen if the vendor does not live
         up to these commitments.
         
         
         
         
      5. If in doubt get a second opinion. Sometimes unreliable vendors
         are driven by their own self-interest and not by your best interest.
         They may have special relationships with particular software or
         hardware manufacturers and steer the project in directions to
         maximize their profit. They may try to get your project into their
         "cookie cutter" approach. Checking with another vendor can be
         a healthy step in the decision making process.

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