The Distribution of Obligations and Risks in the IT Operational Contract D17 Version 4 in the Light of the Principles of Strategic Contracting

Abstract

In 2017, a working group drafted an IT operating contract aimed at the private market. Based on several positive effects derived from a number of standard IT contracts in the public market, an IT operations contract called D17 was developed. The intention of the contract was to pro-vide a standard contract for IT operations that was balanced between the parties involved in the contract. From the time the first contract was drawn up until now, new versions have been drafted on an ongoing basis, resulting in a continuous evolution of the scope and content of the contract.
The purpose of this Master's thesis is to investigate whether the distribution of obligations and risks in the D17 version 4 operating contract complies with the principles of strategic contract-ing. The overall objective of strategic contracting is to strive for joint value creation by obtain-ing a relational rent based on the contract the parties enter into. The thesis is based on D17 version 4, as this is the latest version of the contract and, unlike previous versions, it includes public cloud-services as part of the services regulated by the contract.
The analytical part of the thesis starts with the contractual obligations and attempts to examine them in the light of the resource dependency theory. Subsequently, the risk profiles of the par-ties are examined based on principal agent theory with the aim of examining how these may influence the distribution of the risks that the contractual obligations may entail and whether these risks are distributed in accordance with strategic contracting in relation to the current design of the contract
Based on the results of the previous chapters and conclusions of the thesis, a supplementary proposal is drawn up containing several proactive provisions and clauses that could usefully be included in a future version of the contract. All these provisions and clauses will help to bring the contract more in line with the strategic contracting principles and help to create relational rent.