09 March 2007
Public bodies are paying almost three times the market price for IT skills because lengthy supply chains mean that rates are heavily 'marked up' before delivery, recruitment specialists have claimed.
A study by Rethink Recruitment calls on public sector bodies to insist on much shorter outsourced supply chains, or to consider
in-house management of outsourced projects, if they want to glean the maximum value from IT projects.
Rethink's research indicates that outsourcing providers charge up to £2,000 per day for an IT project director, for example, compared with £700 per day if the person was employed directly by an IT staffing company.
The hire of project managers, analysts, technical architects and consultants within the outsourced IT sector also carries unnecessarily large tariffs.
Jon Butterfield, Rethink's managing director, said: 'The outsourcing provider sitting at the top of the contractual chain may have several tiers of suppliers feeding into it. As these skills are pushed down the chain each supplier adds a mark-up.'
Many large public IT projects have become bogged down by inflated costs for outsourced personnel.
PFmar2007
