The Government Shared Services Strategic Vision, published just before the 31 July deadline set in the Cabinet Office business plan, proposes "establishing an equitable market of a small number (circa 2) of accredited independent shared service centres (ISSCs)" from which departments and their related bodies can buy back-office services.
The idea of generating competition through a duopoly is reminiscent of the splitting of England and Wales' electricity generators into two companies, PowerGen and National Power, by the Conservative government in the 1990s.
According to the shared services strategy, in 2009/10, Whitehall departments spent some £2.5bn on HR, finance and procurement "with considerable variation in expenditure and levels of service delivered".
The strategy gives credit to the last administration for beginning consolidation, referring to the 2004 Gershon review. "However, the current landscape is complex - in many cases services are joined up rather than truly shared, lines between providers and customers are blurred; there is scope to improve."
According to the strategy, Approved ISSCs will operate independently from any customer organisation. They will provide "outcome-based services", regularly publishing performance data against established benchmarks. The strategy says that they will be able to make use of different business models, including public, private and mutual, "in order to leverage capability and the financial investment needed to deliver this service".
The strategy does not rule out departments continuing to run their own back-office services - or bidding to become service centres for others. "Where they are large enough, departments will be able to make a case to continue to use their own 'standalone' back office corporate service provision. Performance of these Standalone Service Centres (SSCs) will still be monitored against agreed benchmarks by the central oversight function. Over time, if they are able to show better performance than the ISSCs, they may be able to begin offering services to others. Conversely if an ISSC demonstrates better value for money than a Standalone Service Centre, the department may be compelled to become a customer of an ISSC."
The next phase of the shared service programme will be to prepare a strategic outline business case, to be reported in November 2011.
Meanwhile, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announced that the coalition's tough measures on IT spending had saved £150m saved from 2010/11 budgets for major projects, and £300m by applying greater scrutiny to ICT expenditure.
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Quelle/Source: UKauthorITy, 01.08.2011
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