The best candidates for outsourcing are services that are not intimately tied to the academic mission and that have become sufficiently commoditized to enable adequate services from external contractors who may have relatively little knowledge of Skidmore's unique characteristics. When properly handled, outsourcing benefits the College in two ways:

1. External vendors may be able to provide better quality services at comparable cost.
2. Internal staff are freed up to devote more time to mission-critical College operations.

Dial-in modem service is one example of a good candidate for outsourcing. At present, the College operates about 40 modem lines for a community of over 300 users. This has been a labor-intensive service that still has only mediocre reliability. In the future, new services like RoadRunner and ADSL will either force major new College investments or render our modem service obsolete. Dial-in service should be outsourced, with the existing personnel time redirected to on-campus network services.

Some other possible outsourcing candidates:

• Computer hardware repair services. This has already been partially implemented through the practice of purchasing computers with 3-year warranties.
  
  
• Photography and film processing. Freelance photographers are readily available and high-volume commercial photo processing labs can be good outsourcers for the photographic work currently performed in the Media Center.
  
  
• User training for general applications. Several individuals and companies offer training services for basic Office applications and other similar computing skills.