Transport for London (TfL) CIO Steve Townsend has condoned the SIAM tower model approach to outsourcing and claimed that it works well for TfL, in an interview with Computing published yesterday.
However, Townsend added that plenty of organisations have struggled with tower-based strategies – particularly those within the government – often because they’ve “chosen to totally insource their towers” or have “gone fully outsourced with an integration services third party in charge of delivering technical services”.
Tower-based outsourcing involves the use of multiple service providers for the delivery of various functions, such as finance and accounts or customer service, where each function constitutes a tower, and each service provider is responsible for a separate tower.
Townsend attributed TfL’s own success with tower-based outsourcing to its step-by-step approach and its focus on “how services should be delivered back to the organisation to solve problems”.
Computing also highlighted the confusion surrounding the government’s current policy on using the tower model: the Department of Work and Pensions plans to abandon this approach altogether, while the Ministry of Justice appears to still have plans to transition to this model. Last year deputy director of Government Digital Services Alex Holmes slammed tower-based outsourcing claiming it “combines outsourcing with multi-sourcing but loses the benefits of either”.
High profile industry advisors, such as KPMG, have predicted the end of tower-based strategies over the next few years as many contracts come up for renewal and clients choose transition to as-a-service operations.
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