IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

Names can tell a lot about an organization. Take Shared Services Canada, the recently-formed branch that will the number of data centres and applications across the federal government.

Still in the early stages, it’s not really a true shared services model, Gartner analyst John Kost told a group of government CIOs and IT administrators here Wednesday. “The only thing that’s shared about it is its name,” he said, because it isn’t governed by its customers – federal departments.

Croatian state-controlled information and communications company Apis IT said it has opened a 362 million kuna ($54 million/49 million euro) shared services centre, aiming to support the digitalisation of the Croatian public sector.

The new facility is a so-called government cloud, or an information infrastructure that will unite enormous amount of state administration data, thus making the management and handling of this data easier, with the ultimate goal of creating a paperless state, Apis IT said in a statement on Monday.

Beyond the rage of electioneering politics, one of the most strategic facilities that hold the key to Nigeria’s escape from the doldrums of economic stagnation was recently launched in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

On 20th December, 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned the National Shared Services Centre (NSSC), which is to serve as a strategic resource to stakeholder organizations in both public and private sectors.

The business of local government is changing and citizens are demanding more out of their local administrations. Town and City governments continue to struggle to find ways to meet these needs, often with smaller budgets and fewer resources. Municipalities must look within themselves for opportunities to share, partner, and collaborate to better meet citizen needs and make progress toward the future.

One option for municipalities to consider is to look for opportunities to share internally. For example, combining the financial and human resource operations of their town and school district into one operations office, or sharing information technology departments and systems creates ways to lower expenses, while optimizing current workloads.

The figure is contained in the Treasury Board Secretariat's 2012-13 estimates, which contains broad expense plans for departments and agencies across the federal government.

Almost half that amount is allocated for in-house salaries. A further $466.52 million will be spent on professional services fees and commissions, the documents show.

The General Authority for Regulating the Telecommunications Sector (TRA), represented by the UAE mGovernment’s Center of Digital Innovation’s (CoDI), recently hosted a training program on “Success of Shared Services” and how to maximize and optimize the use of the service resources. These programs were specially developed for Operating Systems Managers and heads of IT sections in the TRA in order update them about the latest developments achieved in this area.

During the training program, many important topics pertaining to Shared Services were discussed with a focus on Smart government, shared resources, cloud computing, IT governance, and mobile devices management programs. Each subject was discussed thoroughly while highlighting best ways to deal with it and its relevance and direct impact on the resource management process, which will lead to the provision of comprehensive value-added services for the TRA’s clients.

Die Erwartungen der Österreicher an die öffentliche Verwaltung nehmen zu: Serviceleistungen sollen mindestens so schnell wie in der Privatwirtschaft erbracht, Doppelgleisigkeiten und Bürokratie vermieden werden. Damit diese hohen Anforderungen der Bürger erfüllt werden können, ist nicht nur eine moderne, abteilungs- und ämterübergreifende Vernetzung und Zusammenarbeit notwendig, auch Know-how und Teamgeist bei den Bediensteten dürfen nicht fehlen.

The NSW Commission of Audit is a group led by senior NSW bureaucrat Kerry Schott, and chaired by influential businessman David Gonski. It was put together by the current NSW Coalition Government after they took government at the last state election, with a view to developing an overarching framework for the future of the NSW public sector. Last week, the Commission produced a report into their examination of the sector (PDF). The NSW Government also published its response (PDF).

Many CIOs in the public sector are keen to reap the cost benefits of shared services, but one analyst has warned of the potential risks for those with diverse agency requirements.

Ovum research director IT for the Asia Pacific region, Steve Hodgkinson, said that the benefits are much greater for “commodity-based” spaces such as data centres, networks and application hosting environments, as opposed to areas like human resources or finance which have gotten into trouble in the past.

Hodgkinson pointed to the case of Queensland Health as a prime example of a shared services failure.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon is establishing a taskforce to analyse the potential benefits of shared services, following a review of its constituent agencies.

The Federal Government on Friday released the Skehill Review of small to medium agencies in the Attorney-General's Department, after receiving the report in in January (pdf).

In a statement issued on Sunday, Queensland technology minister Ros Bates said her department, Science, IT Arts and Innovation, currently used eight separate government-run payroll systems, with individual agencies Arts Queensland, CITEC, the Office of the Queensland Scientist, Queensland Shared Services, Queensland State Archives and Smart Service Queensland all using different systems.

According to Defence CIO Greg Farr, the proposal is likely to be endorsed by Defence brass in the coming month.

It aims to consolidate some $5 billion a year of ICT, finance, human resources and other functions, in line with plans announced in May 2009 by then Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon (pdf).

The key lesson from the Queensland, WA and South Australian shared services miss-adventures is that it is foolish to underestimate the depth and resilience of agency autonomy. Agencies have strong incentives and drivers, supported by culture and on-the-ground operational realities, to make decisions based on local imperatives. Whole-of-government incentives and drivers, on the other hand are weak. When push comes to shove, agency autonomy always wins because it is agency heads that carry accountability for operational service failures.

The state is currently engaged in consolidating shared services platforms in different ‘clusters’ across its operations — for example, in the education or health areas. One of the largest clusters which it plans to consolidate back office services for is the ‘justice’ cluster, which includes not only mega-departments such as NSW Police but also Fire and Rescue NSW, the Department of the Attorney-General and Justice, Legal Aid NSW and more.

The government has won the agreement of big doctors' groups, including the Australian Medical Association, to new arrangements that will allow doctors to claim as much as $100 from Medicare for collating health records with their patients. But as part of the agreement the government has also agreed to postpone the deadline for doctors to meet e-health capability requirements until next May, after originally proposing February.

In theory, a public service super-department could eliminate duplication of work and garner greater purchasing power with potentially seductive savings, but the potential for disaster is huge, information technology industry analysts warn.

Global government organisations may turn away from traditional shared services arrangements to new models like cloud computing and stronger supplier partnerships this year, Gartner predicts.

The analyst firm surveyed 213 IT executives from national, state and local government organisations in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific for its Government IT Sourcing Survey Highlights 2012 report, released this month.

Shared services projects require a willingness to expect the unexpected and set aside traditional deadlines, says Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations technology manager Susan Monkley.

Take the Australian Parliament Workflow Solution, a multi-year shared services exercise under development by DEEWR.

The agency was tasked with building the PWS after developing its own workflow solution (the PDMS), which was adapted for use by 6000 users across four agencies including DEEWR, Defence, FaHCSIA (families, housing, community services & indigenous affairs) and the Department of Innovation.

The Australian State of New South Wales' (NSW’s) new Customer Services Commissioner, Michael Pratt, says one of the streamlined service delivery strategies he is considering could see all NSW licences replaced by a single smart card that records multiple licences the bearer holds. Pratt said he can also foresee licences finding their way into smartphones.

Making that happen, he added, could mean re-alignment of the State's IT operations into something akin to shared services operations.

The Alliance, which consists of Wellington Blayney and Cabonne Councils and Central Tablelands Water, has been involved in the research and development of shared services as an alternate delivery model since 2011.