Georgia to Outsource IT Jobs

Georgia Governor, Sonny Perdue, announced a plan to outsource all the Information Technology jobs in Georgia. Personally I don’t think he has really thought this through.

While on paper it may make sense, in reality I don’t think it will work at least not in all the agencies it is proposed in. Currently there are 12 or 15 agencies involved, depending which articles you read. One of these is the Department and Adult Education( DTAE)

DTAE is the one I know for a fact will not benefit from this move. DTAE oversees the 32 Technical Colleges within the state and they have a lot different needs than some of the other agencies mentioned.

The IT departments within these colleges must be very flexible and this is the main reason an outsourcing plan will not work. Colleges operate best when there is autonomous control and the local college administration are allowed to make decisions that are best for the college and the college’s students.

Any outsourcing company will need to enforce a standard desktop configuration and have specific policies in place to manage the desktops. This just does not work in a college environment. 

For a  college to effectively instruct its students, especially a college that provides hands on technology training, must be able to modify classroom configurations quickly as instructors require. Without this ability the instruction of the students suffer. No outsourcing company whose management is far removed from the day to day happenings at the college are going to be able to provide this flexible service.

If all applications are installed on every classroom workstation, then there is no way that will save money. Classrooms are configured with standard applications, but depending upon the courses taught within that classroom then the configurations can change as much as 40%. To install every application would require substantial investment in additional software. This will not only impose undue performance issues on the workstations, it will also waste money as licenses will need to be purchased and installed on computers whose users will never utilize the application. A local IT department can mange these types of issues a lot better than some corporate structure.

None of these issues even take into account the paltry salary the state pays many IT workers currently. The average salary for these colleges is $32K per year. There is no way an outside vendor can provide the same services cheaper than the state already pays. The only way I see them saving money on salaries to outsource the helpdesk call centers to some other  country such as India. Its a sad day when the State of Georgia takes jobs away form Georgian’s and gives them to people in other countries.

Since I’m one of the people affected by this change, I’m sure there will be many more articles on this subject as information about this change develops.

Technorati tags: outsource, gerogia, information tecnhology, education

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