SSON Roundtable Debate - Uk General public Sector Shared Products and services - Exactly where Now and Wherever Up coming?

Sharing expert services has risen up the agendas from the UK's national ?http://www.vimle.com/ and native governments recently, propelled by political and economic traits too as by more concrete things these kinds of as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Effectiveness Assessment and Sir David Varney's report on transformational govt. In an attempt to throw some light-weight on current developments and to analyze where shared companies can be headed in long term, SSON convened a roundtable discussion involving a group of practitioners and advisors at area and nationwide stage, chaired by SSON's on the net editor Jamie Liddell. The outcome were, certainly, illuminating...

Attending had been:

Tony Isaacs Programme Manager Warwickshire Immediate Partnership The Warwickshire Direct Partnership is really a shared companies programme comprising all six community authorities inside 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 Products and services Browne Jacobson Browne Jacobson is one from the largest law firms during the Midlands with offices in Nottingham, Birmingham and London. The firm acts for over 100 local authorities, either directly or through their insurers. It recently published its Shared Providers Survey '08, one from the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared expert services inside the United kingdom.

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

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

SSON: Peter, you're at the head of one in the more prominent nationwide 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 monetary gains which will be passed back to research and the research community, but probably much more importantly inside 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' companies onto one common platform, and transforming them. The business case started with an outline about two yrs 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 while in the last two several 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 subsequent year. We already have some companies live while in the IT and strategic sourcing areas.