Ict Outsourcing at Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company

Abstract

ICT outsourcing has steadily grown in popularity over the last two decades. However many outsourcing arrangements do not last due to various reasons such as mismanagement of the outsourcing contract, inadequate supplier selection processes, poor requirements definition amongst others. This paper looked at ICT outsourcing at NCWSC with an aim of establishing the following objectives; the reasons why ICT services were outsourced at NCWSC, the factors that hinder the success of ICT outsourcing at NCWSC and finally establishing the employee attitudes towards the outsourced services at NCWSC. The study employed the case study design. Judgmental sampling was used to sample 97 employees at NCWSC from various departments. Data was collected from the respondents using a questionnaire. Analysis of the data was done using percentages and proportions. Factor analysis was also employed to bring out the various distinct factors that could be hindering the success of ICT outsourcing. The study established that the main reasons why NCWSC outsourced ICT were to improve maintenance and servicing of ICT equipment, to reduce downtime on broken down ICT equipment, to improve quality of ICT services, to enable NCWSC focus on its core services, to improve management of ICT services and finally to access latest technologies from service providers. The study also established that the main factors that hindered the success of ICT outsourcing at NCWSC were; poor management of the outsourcing contract, poor working relationship between the outsourcing vendor and NCWSC, failure of NCWSC to put in place internal measures to prevent over reliance on specific ICT outsourcing service providers and finally ineffectiveness of the ICT outsourcing vendor selection process. The employee attitude towards outsourced services, varied from the various aspects of the outsourced ICT services. On software related services, aspects such as the service provider availing competent staff were positive. Other aspects such as effective resolution of issues and innovations from service providers were negative however the employees were generally satisfied with the software related outsourced ICT services. On the hardware/ICT Equipment related services, positive aspects were on issues such as timely resolution of reported issues, scheduled preventive maintenance and effective resolution of problems.