Outsourcing public sector services to electronic commerce players

In December 2000, the municipal social service department of the city of Turku, Finland, outsourced its open care grocery shopping to an online grocery retailer. Prior to the implementation of the online service, the open care employees had taken care of grocery shopping for all those customers who were not able to do it themselves. The city officials expected that an outside e-commerce player would among other things bring time savings so that the open care service would be able to focus on the hard core of open care - caring for the elderly and the disabled at home. This paper examines the expected and realised value from outsourcing from the viewpoint of the three main stakeholders: the customers, the employees and the management. The findings are based on employee and customer surveys as well as interviews with the open care management.