The Cabinet Office is looking for suppliers to develop Whitehall's first major shared services initiative in line with the government's efficiency agenda.
The plan is for a shared service centre to run human resources (HR) for the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The winner of the procurement, due to start in August, will provide HR software including case management, document management and integrated telephony. The three-to-five-year deal will also include implementation, hosting, and support and management services.
The system will run on the Cabinet Office's existing infrastructure and is likely to be located outside of London, as recommended by the Lyons report into the feasibility of relocating public sector activities from the south-east to other parts of the country.
Shared services are a key component of the government's drive to strip an annual £12.5bn out of public sector administrative spending by 2007/8.
There are up to 1,300 different government bodies with their own HR and finance systems. The shared services model will have departments and agencies using a single back-office system to cut costs and boost efficiency.
The approach is also a focus for Ian Watmore, head of the new eGovernment Unit (eGU) in the Cabinet Office.
Departments and agencies are being asked to join one of a series of different models being developed by the eGU.
Larger bodies such as the Department for Work and Pensions will work on standardising their own systems, while smaller organisations will form groups, Watmore told Computing in May.
'Government is so big there clearly won't be one shared solution to service it all, but there will be families of solutions,' he said.
The Cabinet Office procurement is the first move by central government to put the theory into practice.
Autor: Sarah Arnott
Quelle: Computing, 13.07.2005
