SSON Roundtable Discussion British isles Community Sector Shared Expert services In which Now and Where Following?

Sharing companies has risen up the agendas of the UK's countrywide and local governments in recent times, propelled by political and money tendencies ?Environmental consultancy London  also as by much more concrete components this kind of as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Efficiency Review and Sir David Varney's report on transformational govt. In an make an effort to throw some mild on latest developments and also to analyze where by shared expert services might be headed in long run, SSON convened a roundtable discussion involving a bunch of practitioners and advisors at local and countrywide degree, chaired by SSON's online editor Jamie Liddell. The effects were, without a doubt, illuminating...

Attending were being:

Tony Isaacs Programme Supervisor Warwickshire Immediate Partnership The Warwickshire Immediate Partnership is usually a shared services programme comprising all 6 regional authorities in the county of Warwickshire: North Warwickshire Borough Council; Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council; Rugby Borough Council; Stratford District Council; Warwick District Council; Warwickshire County Council; and three private-sector partners in Steria, MacFarlane Telesystems and Northgate Information Systems.

Dominic Swift Head of Shared Expert services Browne Jacobson Browne Jacobson is one in the largest law firms within the Midlands with offices in Nottingham, Birmingham and London. The firm acts for over 100 community authorities, either directly or through their insurers. It recently published its Shared Solutions Survey '08, one of the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared products and services in the Uk.

Peter Telford Chief Executive Officer Research Councils United kingdom Shared Products and services Centre Research Councils United kingdom (RCUK) is a strategic partnership between the seven British isles Research Councils. RCUK was established in 2002 to enable the Councils to work together far more effectively to enhance the overall impact and effectiveness of their research, training and innovation activities, contributing to the delivery from the Government's objectives for science and innovation.

Ray Tomkinson Local Govt Improvement Specialist and Shared Products and services Author Ray Tomkinson is the author of Shared Providers in Neighborhood Federal government: Improving Service Delivery (Gower, 2007). Ray managed the Welland Partnership shared solutions project and currently operates as a consultant.

SSON: Peter, you're at the head of one with the extra prominent countrywide shared services centres [SSCs]. Can you explain a little about the drivers behind the move in your organisation?

Peter Telford: Behind the Research Council's business case are benefits focusing on what are seen as economical gains which will be passed back to research and the research community, but probably a lot more importantly during the early stages is the feeling that we can secure better effectiveness in business support to that research community by aggregating the seven Research Councils' solutions onto one common platform, and transforming them. The business case started with an outline about two decades ago. There was a lot of work done on certain parts with the shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together within the last two years. The full business case was accepted by the Research Councils in line with CSR07 [Comprehensive Spending Evaluate 2007] in August last year, and the intention at the moment is that we will go live on the platform at the beginning of following year. We already have some services live while in the IT and strategic sourcing areas.

SSON: Tony, your project's been going for rather longer than that. Would you say that the drivers behind the Warwickshire Direct Partnership are similar?

Tony Isaacs: I think ours were slightly different in that when we started off in 2002/3 the driver behind that was, basically, to capitalise on the money that was available from central government at the time. We made a bid as the Warwickshire On-line Partnership, and set up that particular group specifically to bid for that money: a total of £2m. We identified a number of different projects that we would attempt to procure and implement with that money, not least of which was the joint procurement by all 6 authorities in Warwickshire of a CRM [citizen-relationship management] system and associated telephony systems. We got the full £2m and since then we have actually implemented it; we jointly went to procurement and we've ended up with the Northgate front office CRM system.

Now I don't think the goalposts have changed, but the drivers have. I think the drivers have changed in that there is no money available now; it's exactly the opposite insofar as before there was money splashing about, if you will, from central govt, and now it's the opposite insofar as with CSR07, with all the efficiencies and demands that there are on regional authorities to save, there is an overriding need to make things more effective and a lot more efficient, and shared products and services is seen as being one key method of doing that - with the consequence that we are in a position now in which our chief executives, our leaders, are very keen in looking at what can be done. And based upon that - or around all this - is the whole area from the two-tier structure within Warwickshire, and the drive that the govt may want to push - and seems to be pushing - with regards to unitaries. But Warwickshire is very clear that it wants to retain its two-tier organisational structure and will do so by sharing expert services.

Dominic Swift: Tony, I just want to follow something through on that, because it's a theme that emerged when we did our research on shared services [Browne Jacobson's Shared Companies Survey '08] that certainly effectiveness savings and improvements inside the way products and services are delivered are key drivers, but what you've identified as a lack of money was one from the real inhibitors, because in order to deliver shared expert services there is often a considerable cost: You've already mentioned telephony which was obviously put in as part from the grant, and one with the problems that people seemed to face was the immediate increase in costs to deliver a shared solutions stream before any efficiency savings could actually be delivered.

Tony Isaacs: You're absolutely right insofar as there's a need to spend in order to deliver efficiencies, and what we're seeking to do is to build up good, strong, powerful business cases that maybe looking over a five-year spread, so that while there is actually a recognition that to begin with you could need to spend money, over the period following that it's anticipated that there will be savings. And Warwickshire might be different, but we don't necessarily regard it just as pounds saved: it could be efficiencies. So it's non-financial benefits also as economical ones.

SSON: Ray, do you see many differences between the drivers for nearby and nationwide shared services?

Ray Tomkinson: Yes I think there's one big difference, which is the issue of government compulsion, as it ended up. There's no doubt about it: central authorities departments recognise that they really don't have much alternative at the moment to creating some element of shared solutions - because the Treasury makes sure that they do, because the Treasury controls the purse strings. It's less clear that in local federal government every council is going to have to go down the shared services road.

As was being made abundantly clear a minute or two ago, area authorities have different ways of approaching their monetary restrictions or their political considerations, one of which is the unitary agenda - or the two-tier agenda in other councils. So some councils are going to have to go down the shared solutions route because it's the only way organisationally that they're going to function. Other councils don't have that imperative at the moment and I'm working with one group of four councils which are looking at sharing providers but not because of economical pressures. They're looking at it because they want to make service improvements, to improve resilience of companies, and also give opportunities to create new solutions. So it's a very different agenda between the two.

SSON: Peter, from a nationwide perspective are you seeing an increased pressure from govt to implement?

Peter Telford: Yes. Historically I've been in shared expert services during the private sector, regional authority and now central governing administration so I suppose I can absolutely empathise with the previous comments. I think the compulsion from central govt is largely fiscal although there is usually a feeling that the transformational agenda that sits behind it is also very prominent. I think the other difference in central government is it is easier to identify and reach a critical mass in which you can actually effect a transformation and deliver performance and effectiveness. At the area authorities level, it is far more difficult to create critical mass - which then makes the funding routes and the benefits probably extra difficult to determine during the early stages.