IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

As more and more companies implement shared services for their own finance organizations, however, any competitive advantage a company may derive from such gains will likely diminish. What forward-thinking finance executives should now explore are strategies for pursuing benefits beyond the "baseline" gains afforded by the standardization, consolidation, and automation inherent in many shared services implementations.

When Tony Clement and Rona Ambrose announced the establishment of Shared Services Canada, they brought into formal existence the culmination of 15 years of hard work by thousands of officials across the Government of Canada.

These unsung heroes have toiled without much recognition to figure out what it will take to modernize the "guts" or machinery, of government for the 21st century.

In reality, the BPO function is nothing more than the contracting of specific business tasks, typically back office business tasks, to a 3rd party service provider. Companies like a payroll bureau and recruitment agencies have been effectively performing these kinds of services for decades. In the late 1990's improvements in computing technology, the internet and global communications allowed an explosion in outsourced customer services centers. This in turn led to an increased focus in businesses not just looking at the BPO function but also in the breaking down of traditional organizational processing silos and the creation of aggregated back-office functions in the form of shared services centers.

Collaboration established itself early as the theme of the 20th annual GTEC conference here this week, and the federal government’s chief information officer joined in with her Report from the CIO.

“Collaboration is what will power the transformation of the public service,” Corrine Charette said in her half-hour address to a packed auditorium.

As documented on our new GovCloud.info wiki, 3S0 is also an implementation of a Shared Services Organization, indeed they’re specifically chartered that way.

Most notably they should align with and support major change programs like ‘Shared Services Canada‘.

This imperative to drive hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings will set out to transform the organization in line with this diagram – Shifting them right from decentralized in to the Shared Services sweet spot.

As the name suggests this is a best practices program that will define how a Federal Government can implement a Cloud Computing strategy. This will act as a unifying project, we’ll be basing this on Canadian activities and it will also be the headline theme for the launch of our USA Chapter too.

The critical point this program will define is the role this platform can play in stimulating the economy and driving economic growth.

The trend of rising overhead costs comes at a time when the government is counting on big savings by revamping its internal services to "transform" how it operates, manages its people and serves Canadians. The government already has several internal services projects under way, including Shared Services Canada, but overhead costs continue to climb.

Government documents posted online Wednesday show that the Conservatives have given Shared Services Canada the mandate to buy end-user hardware and software for workers in the 43 federal agencies it serves, along with a handful of parliamentary watchdogs and other federal agencies. In all, Shared Services Canada will be in charge of buying end-user devices such as laptops and mobile devices, and software, including security software, for 106 federal organizations.

Grant Westcott said as part of consolidating the IT operations of 43 government departments, Shared Services Canada will inherit "a whole series of contractual arrangements."

"We know already that there is a wide variance in pricing - by consolidating them together, we can then go to the lowest price by the aggregation of the contractual obligation and thereby reach savings that way," he said.

Last year's announcement by the Federal government to develop a shared services approach to IT service delivery and procurement hit the solution provider community in Canada like a thunderbolt.

The move to modernize and consolidate IT systems and resources in 43 government departments through the aid of Shared Services Canada put uncertainty and fear inside every major IT solution provider in the National Capital Region.

Shared Services Canada generated savings “almost immediately” by taking a government-wide approach to integrating the government’s IT infrastructure, said Diane Finley, minister of public works and government services, in her speech at the Government and Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC) yesterday in Ottawa.

“Email transformation will result in $ 50 million of taxpayers’ dollars saved,” she said.

"Savings was at the heart of the mandate that Prime Minister Harper gave SSC two years ago and it still is," said Minister Finley. "SSC generated savings almost immediately, just from taking a government-wide approach and integrating IT infrastructure. Those early savings are helping reduce $150 million in costs that the 2012 Economic Action Plan Budget outlined and email transformation will result in another $50 million of taxpayers' dollars saved."

If there was any doubt that Shared Services Canada is at the forefront of the Conservative government’s efforts to rationalize federal spending, it was dispelled earlier this month — when it accepted nearly 60 procurement employees from Public Works.

SSC’s newest workers are experts in contracting for computers, networking gear and email – and they’ve arrived just in time for an historic transformation of the government’s electronic backbone.

Rona Ambrose, Public Works Minister, said that not only will the information technology system be more efficient and secure this way, it will also be cheaper. The government expects to see cost savings of US$102-204 million a year.

New Brunswick's Department of Education has a dilemma.

It needs to cut costs, but it doesn't want to do so at the expense of what happens in the classroom, so it has launched a public consultation in a bid to gather ideas on how exactly to do that.

One of the ideas being bounced around is finding ways to share services between school districts, anything from IT and human resources to transportation, food services, and professional development.

The DHAs and the IWK issued a request for proposal Wednesday to examine possible improvements by better sharing and standardizing administrative and support service delivery.

"The Shared Services initiative is about seeking opportunities for innovative, responsive and cost-effective services to the public," said Pat Lee, CEO of Pictou County Health Authority and executive sponsor for the project.

Gordon Lummis said he agrees with the recommendations put forth in a report by Kings County chief administrative officer Tom MacEwan.

Municipality of County Warden Ron Baillie said Wednesday that request for proposals for a governance study is on the agenda for a shared services meeting Sept. 9.

Mayors and the warden, along with each CAO, usually attend the shared services meetings and since all the players involved will be in attendance, governance will be discussed.