The politics of politics - sorry, outsourcing...

What an interesting contrast three news items make when it comes to the current state of the art in public sector iCT in that most controversial of topics - outsourcing. 

On the one hand, we have had some interesting reaction to our straight-faced presentation at the end of last week on the Coalition's stated position on the Police; closing its ears to any counter-suggestions, Cameron and his Home Secretary Theresa May are still holding the line that the law enforcement community isn't suffering anything like a 20% cut in budget, more like 9%, a move simply designed to take its funding back to 197 levels and show willing as part of cross-government deficit-cutting moves. And that the way to live with this new funding reality is to make better use of resources and take all these coppers out of "HR and IT" that Cam is convinced are cluttering up the back office, do shared services and what have you, and Robert's your proverbial avuncular figure.

That's the line - and the reaction we've seen is that not everyone, especially people in Blue, don't agree. Then this week, we've already had news that outsourced ICT staff at supplier Fujitsu working on big contracts for people like the taxman and DVLA may go on strike in September. Why? The unions say the staff actually doing the job are being offered below inflation pay rises while their bosses are getting £14,000 bonuses for meeting client targets. If you say that's capitalism, sure - it's also perfectly reasonable, surely, for economic agents like the workers to seek better recompense, if that is really the situation? 

And finally, what about this project Service Birmingham has been running to quietly recruit hundreds of Brummies into its contact centre who wouldn't otherwise have much of a chance of getting a job? The cynical amongst us might say it's handy PR to counter-balance all those stories about jobs going abroad. The medium-cynical might say it's still political window dressing even if it's not that, as it's driven by local politicians anxious to be seen to making this JV work for the city. Actually - great. Isn't that what politics is about anyway, using resources to meet the demands of your constituents? 

Put all this together, and what have you got? If nothing else, that outsourcing is both not going away and also that it needs deft political handling or it can easily turn around and bite you on the posterior. Which you may have known… but what will you do when your staff ask why their jobs are on the line to meet a target they don't believe is worth the sacrifice?