Implementing and managing the governments telecommunications infrastructure in North America: Meeting the outsourcing challenge

Governments are more and more relying on PPP to develop and improve their telecommunications infrastructure. Many States are combining several approaches of in-house and outsourced services. The Government of Quebec has been struggling with the different forms of PPP and networks developed by the different ministries. As successful e-government models have emerged under multi-use networks (Washington and Texas), the Government Of Quebec is facing important challenges. In fact, in the ever-evolving world of IT, citizens expect to deal with one government, not with a set of agencies and authorities working in silos. The current telecommunications infrastructure in Quebec faces two challenges: how to reach economies of scale and how to manage these networks. Answering the first question requires to converge the service delivery of different public authorities under one state-wide network. In fact many networks are used by different ministries and public bodies in Quebec. The second challenge can be resolved by assessing best practises of the PPP model.