SSON Roundtable Discussion United kingdom General public Sector Shared Solutions Exactly where Now and Exactly where Future?

Sharing providers has risen up the agendas from the UK's countrywide and local governments in recent years, propelled by political and money tendencies ?Environmental consulting firm  likewise as by a lot more concrete aspects this sort of as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Performance Review and Sir David Varney's report on transformational govt. In an make an effort to throw some light-weight on modern developments also to study where by shared providers might be headed in foreseeable future, SSON convened a roundtable debate involving a gaggle of practitioners and advisors at local and nationwide level, chaired by SSON's on the internet editor Jamie Liddell. The effects had been, in fact, illuminating...

Attending were being:

Tony Isaacs Programme Manager Warwickshire Direct Partnership The Warwickshire Direct Partnership is often a shared expert services programme comprising all six nearby authorities from 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 from the Midlands with offices in Nottingham, Birmingham and London. The firm acts for over 100 area authorities, either directly or through their insurers. It recently published its Shared Services Survey '08, one from the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared companies inside the United kingdom.

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

Ray Tomkinson Neighborhood Authorities Improvement Specialist and Shared Solutions Author Ray Tomkinson is the author of Shared Services in Neighborhood Govt: Improving Service Delivery (Gower, 2007). Ray managed the Welland Partnership shared providers project and currently operates as a consultant.

SSON: Peter, you're at the head of one with the much more prominent nationwide shared expert 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 economic gains which will be passed back to research and the research community, but probably additional importantly within 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' expert services onto one common platform, and transforming them. The business case started with an outline about two several years ago. There was a lot of work done on certain parts on the shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together inside the last two years. The full business case was accepted by the Research Councils in line with CSR07 [Comprehensive Spending Assessment 2007] in August last year, and the intention at the moment is that we will go live on the platform at the beginning of future year. We already have some providers live during 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 have been 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 federal government at the time. We made a bid as the Warwickshire Online 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 government, and now it's the opposite insofar as with CSR07, with all the efficiencies and demands that there are on community authorities to save, there is an overriding need to make things a lot more effective and additional efficient, and shared providers is seen as being one key method of doing that - with the consequence that we are in a position now exactly where 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 of your two-tier structure within Warwickshire, and the drive that the govt may perhaps 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 products and 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 companies [Browne Jacobson's Shared Solutions Survey '08] that certainly effectiveness savings and improvements within the way solutions are delivered are key drivers, but what you've identified as a lack of money was one of the real inhibitors, because in order to deliver shared products and services there is a considerable cost: You've already mentioned telephony which was obviously put in as part of the grant, and one of your problems that people seemed to face was the immediate increase in costs to deliver a shared products and services 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 really 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 can be different, but we don't necessarily regard it just as pounds saved: it could be efficiencies. So it's non-financial benefits as well as economical ones.

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

Ray Tomkinson: Yes I think there's one big difference, which is the issue of governing administration compulsion, as it ended up. There's no doubt about it: central government 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 regional government every council is going to have to go down the shared products and services road.

As was being made abundantly clear a minute or two ago, neighborhood authorities have different ways of approaching their money 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 companies 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 companies but not because of economic pressures. They're looking at it because they want to make service improvements, to improve resilience of expert services, and also give opportunities to create new providers. So it's a very different agenda between the two.

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

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