e-governance and citizen information - Universitat Oberta de ...

E-governance and Citizen Information 106 Managing Technological Innovationsector than from the Telecommunications and Information Technology Centre. Telecommunicationsand Information Technology Centre. In other words many departments began totake over the management of their own systems” (P9). “In any case, everything comes downto fashions in the market, from 1995 to 2000 the fashion was for outsourcing and now it'sgoing in the opposite direction. Each provider has its strong points and one has to take advantageof them. These days, IT is a tool for business transformation” (P24).However, the benefits of outsourcing were not clear: “The structure of T-Systems ended upwith invoicing by hours to different profiles that was atrocious [...] Now T-Systems brings corporatesupport (mail, etc), and something of development. There's a certain immobility whilstwaiting to see what happens” (P9). For this reason, in the end, it involved a rethinking of themodel: “the relationship with the private sector? Before it was a relationship of conveniencewith no planning. Now there is a long-term planned relationship. It is strengthening the productionof contents. A basis of internal production has been abandoned. On the other hand,now the Administration is more involved in decision-making despite the fact that the volumeof outsourcing has increased” (P28). From the private sector there is recognition of thischange: “It has become total control – there wasn't any before – it's very exhaustive, fromthe tools to the whole process. This control is good for comparing ideas, despite the fact thata lot of time is taken up on useless reports and explanations that go nowhere...” (P33).6.4.2. The Know HowAn element strongly linked to outsourcing was the loss of knowledge within the Administration:“in reality T-Systems did more of those things than they said. There was a certain cautionabout this: some development was requested. Once they had done something, it'spossible that the same thing was requested again and they replicated it for another unit ordepartment. [...] The problem in this sense was the ownership of knowledge and a certaincarelessness on the part of the Generalitat regarding how to take care of it” (P63).Now there is a better understanding about what has to be done. In the words of one civilservant: If you know what you want to do, you can't outsource the brain only the ‘hands’ (P2).“It's also important that this knowledge is, and remains, within the Administration. The situationhas also changed because earlier the companies were the ones who knew how to dosomething, whereas now there is widespread uncertainty” (P7).http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic