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General Motors To Slash Outsourcing In IT Overhaul
gManZboy writes "GM's new CIO Randy Mott plans to bring nearly all IT work in-house as one piece of a sweeping IT overhaul. It's a high-risk strategy that's similar to what Mott drove at Hewlett-Packard. Today, about 90% of GM's IT services, from running data centers to writing applications, are provided by outsourcing companies such as HP/EDS, IBM, Capgemini, and Wipro, and only 10% are done by GM employees. Mott plans to flip those percentages in about three years--to 90% GM staff, 10% outsourcers. This will require a hiring binge. Mott's larger IT transformation plan doesn't emphasize budget cuts but centers on delivering more value from IT, much faster--at a time when the world's No. 2 automaker (Toyota is now No. 1) is still climbing out of bankruptcy protection and a $50 billion government bailout."
Michigan is roughly as big as the U.K., maybe that will bring some perspective.
Good-bye
I worked for a while in state government. The IT department had established metrics for all products and services. If the Treasury department wanted a new PC (and the associated management, imaging, desktop support, etc) there was a fixed cost for that, and the Treasury department paid IT for the services it performed. This has a lot of administrative overhead, but it means that "IT" isn't a cost, they actually generate revenue. It forces the consumers of IT to justify their expenses. IT is in a terrible position having to describe why we spent XX amount of money on this particular system, or why we own this many PCs. They ought to be involved in finding out, but the users of the technology need to be involved and need to justify their own use of technology, and aid in making decisions about necessity.