Swindon Council has hired a private sector IT director,
Hitesh Patel, to push through a major outsourcing
project.
The council published a tender notice last week and aims to
transfer some customer facing systems to a strategic partner by 1
November.
The council expects to transfer its revenues, benefits and
back-office functions, including finance, human resources and IT,
to the partner in a 10-year deal worth £18.5m a year. It aims to
sign the contract on 1 October.
The authority is anxious to avoid the problems associated with a
prolonged procurement process that affected similar projects at
Swansea and Walsall councils.
Gavin Jones, the council's deputy chief executive, said, "Patel
was chosen to be the programme director because he had experience
of three major outsourcing partnerships while he was with
Diageo."
As the drinks company's global IS strategy director, Patel
oversaw the outsourcing to IBM of Diageo's worldwide technology
infrastructure and services.
He followed the £350m IBM infrastructure deal with a £30m-plus
five-year contract with Accenture to develop Diageo's SAP
system.
Patel's first outsourcing deal at Diageo was 10 years ago with
CSC. "A few years later, we decided to insource parts of the
contract because we had not been clear about what we wanted," he
said.
Swindon Council's lessons for successful
outsourcing
Before embarking on its outsourcing strategy, Swindon Council
looked at the experiences of other councils that have used
strategic partners.
Deputy chief executive Gavin Jones identified three lessons:
- Be clear about the outcomes expected from strategic
partners
- Link delivery of outcomes to the payment mechanism
- Both council and supplier must be able to afford any
deal.