The Assessment of Outsourcing IT Services using DEA Technique: A Study of Application Outsourcing in Research Centers

This article proposes a model to make an assessment of efficiency in Information Technology (IT) outsourcing in research centers through data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this research input and output variables of DEA model for assessment of IT outsourcing efficiency distinguished. The decision-making units (DMUs) include 36 research centers in Iran. Expenses and capabilities of contractors represent the inputs and the satisfaction of users, risks, and quality constitute the outputs. In order to calculate the input and output values, a questionnaire has been conducted to DMUs. Afterwards, BCC model has facilitated the calculation of the efficiency of the DMUs and classifies efficient and inefficient units. In addition, Anderson Peterson's model is used for ranking efficient DMUs. This research has brought us to the conclusion that the variables of risk and quality account for the biggest shares in efficiency improvement of non-efficient DMUs.