The UK government is setting up a new unit it promises will "bring forward the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation."
Government outsourcing has long attracted criticism over value for money and service quality, with technology-heavy business processes among the contracts coming under scrutiny.
The government said the new unit, based within the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet, would "coordinate departmental insourcing activity, unblock barriers to delivery and identify cross-government opportunities to maximize value for money and restore direct operational accountability."
The unit will consider bringing critical service contracts back in-house and work alongside the recently announced Public Interest Test, which applies to most central government service contracts worth at least £1 million. The test requires departments to consider factors beyond short-term price, including service quality and public value. The unit is also expected to help reduce spending on consultants and professional services by building capability within the Civil Service.
One early candidate is the Cabinet Office's building management work, including cleaning and security, which the government says it will consider bringing in-house when existing contracts end in 2028.
The case for insourcing has gained urgency in Whitehall following the disastrous start to Capita's contract to administer the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS).
The UK outsourcing company won the seven-year, £239 million contract in November 2023 and took over from MyCSP in December 2025. The previous arrangement with MyCSP began in 2012 and had cost £238 million since 2016. Capita's takeover produced a glitchy website and left some former civil servants struggling to access their pensions, as The Reg exclusively revealed. .
In July, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said the Capita CSPS contract "could be a prime candidate for insourcing in the future."
However, he also admitted that option would have to wait. "If I were to terminate the contract straightaway, that would clearly cause severe disruption to the payroll. I cannot replace a complex pension operation overnight," Thomas-Symonds said.
Even if the government eventually brings the pension administration back in-house, it is unlikely to be an early candidate. Capita's initial seven-year term runs until December 2032, and the contract includes an option for a further three years.
(Score: 2, Troll) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @08:19PM (10 children)
>Government outsourcing has long attracted criticism over value for money and service quality
Almost as much criticism as government employees have attracted for being lazy, inefficient, mismanaged, sullen dullards.
So, now outsourcing is on its way out to make insourcing the in thing again?
Let the debates continue... taking bets: will bell-bottoms come back into fashion first?
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Unixnut on Wednesday September 30, @09:06PM (9 children)
Oh yes, the big money is not made in maintenance contracts but in migration contracts, especially with overruns and "unexpected costs". So you outsource everything, resulting in expensive migration contracts and contractor fees.
Then when that has been squeezed of all potential for quick earnings and all that is left is some small maintenance fees, it is time to migrate it all back in-house. More consultant fees, more migration contracts, more scope for big money. Rinse-and-repeat.
And as its the government, they don't have to worry about profit and loss, or even "value for money". After all the taxpayers are paying for it, and nobody consults them about spending their money.
Me, cynical? Never :-D
I'm seeing more and more of them in public, so I think they are already in fashion, or will soon to be. More wondering whether energy rationing, general strikes or 3-day work weeks will come back first in the UK...
(Score: 2, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 30, @09:53PM (4 children)
What's the correlation of bell bottoms to gas lines? Are they already popular in Russia?
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday October 01, @08:14AM (3 children)
Assuming you are not just trolling, you'd probably be better off asking the Russians but I've not heard anything about it (not that I follow it particularly mind you), more to the point it isn't really on topic about the UK.
I was more referring to the news in the UK where apparently the government is considering rationing [metro.co.uk] fuel, which harks back to the Arab oil embargo in the 70s, the fuel rationing, 3-day work weeks, strikes (e.g. "Miners Strike"/"Winter of discontent") and of course bell-bottoms being the height of fashion, which seem to be most of what people told me about the 1970s UK.
So if Bell bottoms are back in fashion, and the news is starting to prepare for fuel rationing in the UK, we can debate about what will be next to show up.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 01, @12:17PM (2 children)
The joke is that fashion is a cycle, and apparently so are fuel shortages. The question is: whether or not they are synchronized - there's no apparent reason they should be, but nothing stopping it either.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday October 01, @01:38PM (1 child)
Well, if a whole new generation gets to re-live the 1970s full pelt that is at least a data point in favour for the "history repeats itself" idea. It isn't like we get a choice in the matter, we're just along for the ride :-)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 01, @02:54PM
This round didn't start with a Korea-Vietnam continuous US "service" conscription pipeline, so at least that feels like progress...
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, @06:36AM (3 children)
You'd just be skipping a step or two. For too many people, just getting basic income with no job or purpose can result in them doing destructive stuff (just like bored pets destroying furniture etc). So having more of them employed by the government, helping out a bit, is still helping out...
Could possibly do some gamification of the "helping people" stuff.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday October 01, @08:26AM (1 child)
Hmm, well I don't know. Your proposal sounds a bit too much like "make work" to me. I never considered working for someone else to be the peak and goal of my life, it is something I have to do in order to earn money to survive.
If humanity is finally reaching the point where we don't need employment/work in order to survive, then really the answer should not be "Oh, lets just invent pointless work for people to do", trust me being stuck in a dead end job doing pointless tasks just to waste your life is also destructive to your mental health (trust me I've had jobs like that, they paid the bills but I hated them).
I agree just giving people money is not a good solution either, the saying "the devil makes work for idle thumbs" is not without reason, and there are people who will become destructive out of boredom if nothing else.
On the flip side, giving people money would increase demand and prices would rise to compensate, so their purchasing power would be pretty much the same. It doesn't even work economically.
It is as of yet an unsolved problem, but until such time as machines actually start wholesale displacement of humans (at lower cost) it is not critical to deal with it -- no doubt humanity will do what it always does, muddle through as best as it can (at least until the machines rise up against us as forewarned in all those sci-fi dystopias).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday October 01, @09:47AM
It likely really is about forcing make-work on people.
One, it is the sad state of things that make-work has become the norm [davidgraeber.org] and that real, productive endeavors are increasingly rare and actively marginalized. The destruction of the victim's physical and mental health is one of the goals there. It keeps them too busy to build something nice or, far worse, organize so that society's wealth distribution becomes flatter again.
Two, as for keeping things in-house or outsourcing, and setting aside the question of economies of scale or odd situations where quality diverges too much, you have at the bottom of it all the question of who controls what. When you outsource (except in some odd niche cases) you lose control of pretty much every aspect of the work, from privacy to calling the shots about what the system(s) can even do and for whom. When you keep activities in-house, you gain a local pool of competence which attracts further skilled employees both in that field and even in somewhat adjacent fields. Birds of a feather flock together. However, referring back to the bullshit jobs aspect, many managers and employers are highly fearful of skilled, knowledgeable workers. So that inherent corruption works against having things in-house.
That is because of the perception that if you have things outsourced, the manager who controls the budget has the vendor by the short and curlies. There will never be any "back talk" from vendors or consultants when money is on the line and they might even try to help out in destructive office politics in order to ensure ongoing income. In contrast, if you have things in-house, every change will involve dialog and negotiation whether to very minor or very major degrees. That's not a bad thing, though, as it leads to fuller buy-in from the staff while ensuring that the system(s) actually fulfill real needs rather than an almost-fitting mess or a pile of make-work. Again, what is gained through in-house development and maintenance is control over what the system(s) can do and for whom. That includes maintaining confidentiality but also includes basic work flow and flexibility about customization. For example, there have been several companies which found that writing their own CRM gave them more of what they needed at a lower price than going with the already established vendors.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, @11:09AM
> So having more of them employed by the government, helping out a bit, is still helping out...
One sector that needs more employees is senior living and nursing homes. Currently these jobs pay very little in the USA. From personal experience with relatives and family friends, the level of care (even at highly rated facilities) is poor. The need is very real in the "developed" countries with aging populations.
In many cases, staying at home, instead of a big facility, would be better for just about everyone--but as things stand this is typically only available if one has family to help out...or is wealthy.