He did double-duty too as he worked within the system and spent months gathering his TCO information so as to prove that better IT means better productivity, and that expert IT providers are best qualified to provide IT services. In the face of its opposition, outsourcing has also sought new support from performance-based contracting, and an emerging if sometimes theoretical set of metrics by which agencies might measure contractor performance and pay accordingly. Activities in DOD, NASA and GSA have made some headway with these methods, and that is to their credit. However, to date, performance-based contracting has been a good topic to argue over while legacy IT infrastructures grow new layers of rust. On one side of the equation, performance measures promise agencies a level of control over outsourced IT they do not have in-house.
Agencies can fire contractors who perform badly.
But the sleight of hand that dominates this subject might make performance a sideshow. The process draws on a perfect system metric, against which real performance can be proportionately measured. Unfortunately, some agencies have twisted the perfect baseline metric into a front-end spec in statements of work.