Niyamath Parveez

It is pretty easy to find fault with pretty much everything that politicians, elected council staff and people in charge of a public budget do. With so many different demands it is going to be impossible to please everyone but fairly easy to displease everyone. After all, no one enjoys paying taxes and the thought of working hard and then having the Government or local council come and take a good chunk out of your earnings before your bank account gets a sniff of it is pretty galling for most folk. However, taxes have to be paid to provide so many of the things that people take for granted and this means people have to pay up. And when there are taxes, there is the fact that people have to be paid to collate and collect the information regarding the taxes and then letters must be issued asking for payment. It can all be a costly business which makes the general public even unhappier but the Treasurer at Greene County, Indiana has came up with a way to reduce the cost of providing people with their tax bills.

Outsourcing has fast become one of the most important ways to cut back on costs and is used on a whole variety of businesses. As well as lowering costs, outsourcing is a great way of improving the skill levels of the task and hopefully bringing a far greater level of efficiency to the task. The Treasurer of Greene County, Shelby Meurer, found that outsourcing could not only get the tax bills from their office to the public at a faster rate but it could also greatly help to reduce the amount of money it cost to do so. This double whammy of benefits made outsourcing a fantastic choice and a tendering project was initiated.

Three vendors tendered for the bid and there was a big range in prices but the winning bid guaranteed to complete the work for a price of 30 cents for every parcel sent by the firm. This was almost 20 cents per parcel cheaper than the most expensive tender so immediately stood out as being attractive in the small tendering process.

One of the better aspects of the outsourcing task is that it went to a local firm so the work and more importantly the jobs were staying in the local area. For a politician and Government, safeguarding jobs in the local community is an extremely important task so the fact that a reliable outsourcing firm could be found on their own doorstep made the outsourcing task a lot more palatable for the Greene County office. Another benefit came from the fact that the task would normally take the County office three weeks to but the outsourcing firm managed to turn it around in one week. This meant that the tax bills went out a lot quicker than normal and the local citizens were faced with their bills sooner than normal. This may not have been welcomed by too many citizens but the fact that local jobs were preserved and for a lower cost to the tax-payer should be seen as a positive issue for the people of Greene County.