When I was in 1998 prison services began exploring the feasibility of outsourcing some of its functions to private vendors so that its officers could focus on its core competency of rehabilitating prisoners. The magic question was what and which of the functions could be better performed by private vendors. So the committee came up with The evaluation guidelines are:
What is the likely public reaction to the outsourcing? Any compelling reason for government to perform function (e.g. confidentiality)?
Will the professionalism of the department, public confidence and trust, be maintained?
Are there private vendors who are able to perform the function more effectively and efficiently?
Is there acute shortage of manpower or expertise, which necessitates the outsourcing?
Is outsourcing likely to lead to cost savings, without compromising on safety and security?
Is partial outsourcing of a function possible? If so, are there substantial benefits to be gained from doing so?
If outsourced, is it possible to ensure (with high degree of certainty) that it will be satisfactorily performed in any event? If not, what are the supervision regime for the private vendor, alternate vendors offering services competitively and contingency plans should the main vendor cease the service.
So we zone down to immediate urgency at hand like medical services the reasons that plague most private and government sector insufficient specialized Staffing especially medical officers across the country, medical coverage for all prison institutions with current ratio population of inmates was not adequate. Moreover, high turnover rate of Medical Staff contribute to the existing problem.
The short posting time frame provided little exposure and experience for medical officers to acquire the necessary skills for working in the custodial environment. Like any project initially implement was full of processes and lapses refinement. After a year. Like Chinese saying "船到桥头自然直". I would say Raffles medical group really did a good and even surplussed previously prison medical service professionally.
So who say outsourcing would not work, the difficulties is to reviews of what and which function to outsource ? Maybe Singapore took a page out of US when they wanted to outsource the President during the Bush administration.
