You note that outsourcing is usually for temporary projects, but in my experience, the projects could be darn near permanent and still be outsourced. This may be indicative of state government agencies who may have federal funding for needed projects but no state revenue to support those projects. Where I currently work, we have an incidence reporting system that is critical for tracking acute disease events. It’s intrinsic to our operations but we’ve been outsourcing a part of it for several years. Why not just hire regular employees to do the work? Because our state legislature wants to “shrink” government even as our population balloons (and needs more government services). Ironically, outsourcing often costs more than insourcing, especially when the contract goes on for years and years. But, as you point out, the big picture is that we are still working with local employees. It’s not hurting our tax base

Marie Ann Baileys last blog post..Using Writing to Mentor Students in an Online Course

I have been in a situation before in which we exchanged information via next-day-mail. In many ways it was more pleasant, but this WTW didn’t want to waste a couple days on the mail.

I’ve done contract writing, also. But I had to send back my contract and other paperwork via snail mail–though I do have a fax machine. That’s simply the way this particular company does things, for whatever reason. Since I was paid per article, though, I didn’t have to keep track of my hours and have them approved–which may have been more convenient, but it also turned out to be better for the company (monetarily) than it was for me .

Very informative post–as always!
Jeanne