Securing America’s Future: Tools for Achieving U.S. Technology Independence and Job Growth
Author: Dr. Lester M. Salamon, Director, Center for Civil Society Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and George D. Schindler, President, CGI Federal.
Communities throughout America are confronting a serious mismatch between the skills and facilities their citizens need to remain competitive in a global job market and the ones that are currently available to them. As a consequence, the past two decades have witnessed a significant outsourcing not simply of low-skill production jobs but also of high-quality, skilled jobs in industries such as information technology to workers in far-off lands, leaving many Americans trapped without quality employment opportunities in declining rural and central city communities.
While this situation would be a cause for concern under any circumstances, it has become a matter of special urgency in light of the security issues posed by having critical national intelligence and business information handled by overseas sources.
In George Schindler’s paper, “Understanding the Challenge,” he recommends a strategy of growing IT capacity as a national resource in disadvantaged rural and urban communities in order to address this significant challenge, a strategy sometimes referred to as “on-shoring.” The “Securing America’s Future: Responding to the Challenge” section of this paper seeks to take this recommendation to the next step by outlining an action plan for implementing such a strategy and identifying the “tools of government” that might usefully be mustered for such an effort.
View Executive Summary – Understanding the Challenge by George Schindler
View Executive Summary – Responding to the Challenge by Dr. Lester Salamon
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Creating Jobs in America: Case Studies in Local Economic Development
Author: Dr. Darrene Hackler, Associate Professor, Department of Public and International Affairs.
This report examines case studies of how United States private sector companies are using “onshoring” as an effective economic development tool in local communities. Onshoring is a growing trend where private companies expand production to localities providing lower costs, also referred to as low cost domestic sourcing. The report addresses how localities can experience economic growth in terms of jobs and tax revenues with private sector investment from companies located in traditional urban centers that are considering low cost locations domestic instead of globlal offshoring. In addition, the report examines the economic development potential and impact of onshoring such that localities experience sustainable development that leads to competitiveness and further upgrading of the local economy. That is, how can onshoring be used as an economic tool to create both exogenous and endogenous growth and development. The report concludes with recommendations to public officials at the local, state, and federal levels detailing factors and policies that support the development of onshoring opportunities.
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Building Effective Partnerships in Professional Services
Author: Dr. Paige Wolf, Assistant Professor of Management, School of Management.
To meet ever growing government requirements, agencies will continue to need to delegate many important projects and functions to the private sector. When doing so, it is critical for the government to manage these relationships to achieve successful mission results. Although models for performance-based contracting have existed for years, major projects critical to U.S. government operations fall short of target outcomes. In addition, with the implementation of Federal Lines of Business such as financial management and human resources, government agencies are being driven to take advantage of shared service providers to increase performance, reduce risk and reduce cost. As they attempt to realize the promise of shared services, agencies are challenged to build effective relationships with service providers to achieve their objectives while retaining control, flexibility and agility over the long term.
To help the government address this challenge, this report examines organizations that have established successful public-private outsourcing relationships that achieve the organization’s target outcomes. This report documents the constructs required for a building successful relationships in key areas, including problem definition and solution, successful partnership (e.g., leadership, communication, user engagement, mutual accountability), and achievement of objectives. The report documents best practices and lessons learned from the case studies to spotlight model approaches to building successful outsourcing relationships. The report also discusses the new skill sets required by government managers to implement these approaches successfully.
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