15.3 IT management models#
There are a number of models for managing IT staff and resources in an NSO. These range from in-house development, out-sourcing and off-shoring IT work to external companies, a hybrid in-house/out-sourced approach, and more recently, a collaborative approach to development. There has been a continuous cycle of changing approaches to management over the years – these depend on a number of factors: the size of the organization; government policy; budgetary issues; general management attitude toward managed IT or IT support models; overall staff resources; and global IT trends.
Insufficient resources for IT functions will create problems for the entire organization so it is vital to understand which support model is best to run an organization effectively. Each different approach has its advantages and challenges which are discussed below.
15.3.1 In-house development#
The In-house model is the case where all software development and maintenance are carried out within the NSO by the staff of the IT department. This model was quite common in the past but is much less so today as IT and other support services are wholly or partially outsourced to external companies or individual freelance IT experts.
Statistical processing is a niche market for software vendors and very few ‘off the shelf’ products exist for managing the statistics processing life cycle. Consequently, an NSO may have a legacy of internally developed statistical software (unlike, say Human Resources or budget planning which have a large range of commercial software solutions). This can make maintenance and evolution more complex as upgrades have to be coded rather than being provided by vendors.
An advantage of the in-house model is the autonomy of development, and the stability of teams can ensure the technical know-how of often complex processes is retained by the NSO.
A common challenge with this approach is the difficulty of attracting and retaining IT staff, as salaries in the NSO are often not competitive with those in the private sector, particularly in developing countries. This can result in a high turnover as staff leave once, they have been trained in the IT skills which are in high demand in the marketplace.
In-house IT development can be more costly than the out-sourced model given the necessary investment in time, training, employee salaries and benefits, and management.
15.3.2 Out-sourced development#
With an Out-source IT management model, the main part of development and support is carried out by external resources. External resources can be onsite and come from local suppliers, be offshore and coordinated remotely, or a mixture of the two.
Using external resources has the advantage of flexibility in that resources are used only when needed for specific tasks which can save costs.
Points to take into consideration when using external resources include the loss of institutional knowledge when a consultant leaves and the lack of continuity in a project when an out-source provider changes personnel due to their own priorities. This is a particular risk for low-capacity countries when external staff are brought in, often by a donor agency, to implement a system – once the work is completed and the consultants leave there is inadequate internal capacity to maintain and use the system.
One should also consider vendor incentives as it can be in the interest of external staff to extend a task as long as possible and create a dependency for maintenance and further development of a software product, so it is important to ensure a transparent and ethical relationship with vendors and close monitoring of projects.
This also applies to low-capacity countries where donor aid can be linked to adopting a particular software package implemented by external consultants that the NSO is then unable to maintain themselves once the consultants leave. Cases exist where countries have been left with multiple tools meeting similar needs, particularly in the domain of dissemination software.
Outsourcing is typically a less expensive option than in-house development, as there are minimal training and time involved with IT management. Outsourcing typically converts fixed IT costs into variable costs which allow for effective budgeting as services are only paid for as they are needed.
15.3.3 Hybrid in-house/out-source model#
In the hybrid In-house/Out-source model, the NSO uses both its own staff and also external staff. A hybrid IT model requires internal and external IT professionals to support the business capabilities of the enterprise. With this model, in some cases, only the IT managers are NSO staff members while all development and support are carried out by external staff. Other cases can include more of a mix of both managers and IT experts.
This model is widely adopted in NSOs and is the most common approach because it reflects the realities of the IT market - high mobility of staff with the latest skills are highly mobile and difficult to retain.
This approach typically allows an organization to maintain a centralised approach to IT governance, while using experts to deal with the functionality that is beyond the capabilities of the organization’s IT staff.
15.3.4 Collaborative model#
The collaborative model of NSOs working together on IT projects is a trend that is increasing considerably in recent years. Collaborations can take the form of several organizations working together to develop a software that they will then all use; it can be a single organization developing a software tool that is then adopted and, possibly, further developed by other NSOs.
In the past, most of the statistical software used by an NSO would have been developed within an NSO for use only by that NSO. Today, the trend is for there to be a mix of the older legacy software and common shareable tools.
The obvious advantages of the collaborative approach for an NSO include sharing the software development burden and also sharing experiences, knowledge and best practices through multilateral collaboration and help build collective capacity.
It also reduces the risk for new developments through additional scrutiny and testing according to open-source principles with all members benefiting from each other in terms of ideas and methods.
Collaborating on projects does, of course, have its own challenges for an NSO – particularly in determining how to balance development priorities between the different partner organizations and the increased complexity of project management in the context of multiple-partner collaboration. To achieve this model, partnership management capabilities will need to be developed in an NSO (see Chapter 13 - Human Resources Management and Development).