SSON Roundtable Debate - British isles General public Sector Shared Solutions - Wherever Now and Wherever Following?

Sharing solutions has risen up the agendas with the UK's nationwide ?cash register machine and local governments recently, propelled by political and economical developments too as by more concrete things this sort of as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Effectiveness Overview and Sir David Varney's report on transformational govt. In an try and toss some mild on modern developments and also to take a look at where shared services could be headed in long run, SSON convened a roundtable debate involving a gaggle of practitioners and advisors at local and nationwide amount, chaired by SSON's on the net editor Jamie Liddell. The final results were being, indeed, illuminating...

Attending have been:

Tony Isaacs Programme Supervisor Warwickshire Immediate Partnership The Warwickshire Immediate Partnership is actually a shared solutions programme comprising all 6 regional 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 Solutions Browne Jacobson Browne Jacobson is one of the largest law firms within 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 Expert services Survey '08, one in the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared companies from the United kingdom.

Peter Telford Chief Executive Officer Research Councils Uk Shared Expert services Centre Research Councils Uk (RCUK) is actually a strategic partnership between the seven British isles 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 Regional Authorities Improvement Specialist and Shared Solutions Author Ray Tomkinson is the author of Shared Services in Local Government: Improving Service Delivery (Gower, 2007). Ray managed the Welland Partnership shared expert services project and currently operates as a consultant.

SSON: Peter, you're at the head of one on the a lot more prominent national shared companies 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 far more importantly in 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 yrs ago. There was a lot of work done on certain parts of your shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together inside the last two yrs. 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 following year. We already have some solutions live during the IT and strategic sourcing areas.