City's CIO keeps outsourcing vendor on contract hot seat
Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld (CA), August 29, 2007
Affiliated Computer Services Inc. this week announced an outsourcing contract extension with the municipal government in Riverside, Calif., that could be worth up to $17 million over three years. But in four months, Riverside CIO Steve Reneker plans to seek new bids to manage the city's IT operations to see if he can improve on its deal with ACS.
Reneker said he doesn't want Dallas-based ACS, or any other IT outsourcing vendor that he may hire in the future, to get too comfortable. So Riverside's new contract with ACS is guaranteed for just one year through next July, with two one-year renewal options.
....... But Reneker said that before he was hired as Riverside's CIO in 2005, the outsourcing vendor's contract manager was also heading the city's IT department. "That didn't work out well -- obviously, their motivator was to generate revenue and not to save the city money," he said.
...... And increased data center consolidation is the trend, according to a report (.pdf) released this month by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. IT executives from 29 states completed the survey, and the NASCIO said that 18 of the respondents were either planning consolidations or working on projects, while four others said they had already completed consolidation moves.