Is Cornwall council's slimmed down outsource just a foot in the door for more?

As I wrote last night Cornwall Council has decided to go forward with a plan to outsource IT services to BT. This also sees BT take over telehealth.

There has been a lot of controversy over the plan at the council. It led to a confidence vote over the council's leadership after members felt the cabinet was pushing on wit the deal without the consent of the full council. The then leader Alec Robertson lost the vote and was eventually replaced by his former deputy who opposed the plan.

Here is a detailed article about the agreement that was announced today. It is written by Mark Ballard, who has followed it closely for Computer Weekly.

It sees a slimmed down version has been announce with no large scale privatization of services but just the outsourcing of IT and Telehealth as mentioned. But for how long will further deals be resisted.

I had a conversation with one of the councilors at the council today and he told me he thought it was just the start of outsourcing at the council.

It seems that because the leader lost the confidence vote it was tougher to get the full deal through. In contrast a similarly controversial plan in Barnet saw the leader survive a confidence vote and the council push on with the plan.