Detroit Schools save $3M By Outsourcing IT
April 23rd, 2003
This article from eSchool News online says,
“Officials from the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) say a groundbreaking $75 million contract to outsource the district’s entire information technology (IT) department to local computer firm Compuware Corp. has paid off to the tune of $3 million in IT-related cost savings per year.”
I’m no IT management guru by any stretch of the imagination, but having worked in the technology departments of academic institutions, I don’t know why more school districts (and colleges and universities) don’t do this. It’s extremely difficult for academic institutions to recruit and retain good IT professionals because they can’t compete on salary, benefits, and job satisfaction with the corporate sector. So outsource to the corporate sector to run the IT and let them absorb the costs through economies of scale that an individual university or district typically can’t attain.