Contracting Pros & Cons

If resources and availability cannot be accessed within the partnership then it may be necessary to contract out part (or the entire audit). There are cost implications but also so benefits and some drawbacks:

Advantages of contracting include access to consultants who should:

• have appropriate professional training, experience, facilities, IT resources and expertise.

• access to trained researchers / statisticians, and the time to undertake effective consultation and analysis

• be aware of potential sampling or representational errors and can advise the partnership on strategy and implementational issues.

• Have a good understanding of local underlying socio-economic issues of locally based.

Disadvantages include:

• Knowledge, perception and understanding may be lost to the partnership. There are cases where surveys and focus groups have been commissioned, then some months later a report is provided which is neither read nor incorporated into the strategy. This is bad for two reasons:

  • The time, resource and knowledge from the consultation are lost.

  • The consultation cannot be properly directed and targeted because there is little communication between the contractors and the partnership. This results in the product being of poor quality and diminished application to the rest of the audit.

• The quality and expertise of consultants varies tremendously; there are examples of poor quality work contracted by partnerships in the first round as well as examples of very good work.

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