IT Outsourcing in the Public Sector: A Descriptive Framework from a Literature Review

Abstract

Despite its economic scale, IT outsourcing (ITO) in the public sector (PS) has not yet been deeply analysed by academic literature when compared with ITO focused on the private sector. In fact, the question has often been raised as to whether ITO in the PS should be regarded as completely different to ITO in the private sector. In order to contribute to this discussion our first goal in this paper is, after a review of the academic literature, to summarize the covered topics in a descriptive framework that facilitates the understanding both for researchers and practitioners of the ITO phenomena in the Public Sector. This framework is organized in four main categories that explain the context (the features of the PS) and the rationale of the ITO process (Why, What and How) in the PS. Then, we use this framework to face our second goal: highlight to which extent differences in ITO process between the public and private sectors are clear and can impact upon the implementation of the ITO. Although the conclusions indicate that there are quite a number of points of coincidence, partly because both sectors have organizations with a certain degree of publicness, they also reflect some aspects that are intrinsic to the PS (as the prioritization of non-economistic values, the application of industrial policies, or the search of colaborative sourcing, among others) and which need to be borne in mind in any work tackling ITO in this context.