Question 1
The city council's plan to collocate is a brilliant idea considering the capital expenditure costs that will go down since financial constraints had emerged as the major issue in the delayed renovation project. Collocation means the creation of a data center facility in which a business can rent space for servers and other computing software. For many organizations and businesses, collocation has existed as an ideal project with significant benefits especially for large firms with in-house IT and staff (Gray, Siemsen, & Vasudeva, 2015). Some of the advantages likely to be experienced with the collocation of the library and the Walmart include the following:
Guaranteed ownership and control. The businesses will thus be able to retain full control of the equipment and consequently give them the authority to regulate technology lifecycle.
Cost saving is one of the greatest benefits of collocation hence the businesses will experience a significant reduction of costs associated with IT infrastructure and management.
Security and data protection is also an added advantage for collocation as it protects the facilities against unauthorized access.
The existence of 24/7 local support.
There, however, exist downsides to this approach which may include:
The cost of equipment may be unreasonably high since more capital is required for the routine maintenance and updating of the equipment.
Agility and growth may experience delays.
Convenience and location may not benefit one of the two businesses.
Question 2
Despite the collocation, the library will remain a public organization. My point of the argument lies in the fact that the organization is still out to serve the interests of the public. Any organization that has a significant impact on the public remains to be a public body regardless of whether it is owned by the government or not and therefore, the library, in my opinion, will still exist as a public organization (Pandey, 2010). "Publicness" as Barry Bozeman puts it, is the degree to which an organization is affected by political authority. The library will lose one of the famous Bozeman notions on publicness which considers political influence as a factor in determining the level to which an organization is public. The structure of the library will be affected by the market rather than the political environment and thus make it fall outside Bozeman’s notion of political authority (Boardman et al., 2010).
Question 3
Grantown and Walmart are public and private organizations respectively and for that reason are more likely to have different objectives. Government agencies are known as less materialistic with the objective to serve the public while private managers are seen to prioritize values like cost-efficiency. Under these circumstances, the two bodies are likely to conflict in their management strategies since they have different objectives at the end of the day. Despite the drawbacks that might emerge, the plan is in the best interest of the individuals living in Grantown; it's a project motivated not only towards satisfying the customers’ needs but also promoting education among the young generation.
References
Pandey, S. (2010). Cutback Management and the paradox of publicness. Public Administration Review, 70(4), 564–571.
Boardman, C., Bozeman, B. & Ponomariov, B. (2010). Private Sector Imprinting: An Examination of the Impacts of Private Sector Job Experience on Public Managers WorkAttitudes. Public Administration Review, 70(1), 50–59.
Gray, J., Siemsen, E., & Vasudeva, G. (2015). Colocation Still Matters: Conformance Quality and the Interdependence of R&D and Manufacturing in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Management Science, 61(11), 2760-2781.
