SSON Roundtable Discussion - United kingdom General public Sector Shared Products and services - Where Now and Exactly where Subsequent?

Sharing products and services has risen up the agendas with the UK's nationwide ?http://www.vimle.com/ and local governments in recent times, propelled by political and economical trends in addition as by additional concrete things these kinds of as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Efficiency Evaluation and Sir David Varney's report on transformational govt. In an try and throw some mild on the latest developments and also to take a look at wherever shared products and services could be headed in potential, SSON convened a roundtable discussion involving a group of practitioners and advisors at community and countrywide amount, chaired by SSON's on the internet editor Jamie Liddell. The final results had been, in truth, illuminating...

Attending have been:

Tony Isaacs Programme Manager Warwickshire Immediate Partnership The Warwickshire Immediate Partnership is often a shared companies programme comprising all six community authorities during 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 in the largest law firms within the Midlands with offices in Nottingham, Birmingham and London. The firm acts for over 100 neighborhood authorities, either directly or through their insurers. It recently published its Shared Solutions Survey '08, one on the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared providers from the Uk.

Peter Telford Chief Executive Officer Research Councils United kingdom Shared Providers Centre Research Councils Uk (RCUK) can be 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 on the Government's objectives for science and innovation.

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

SSON: Peter, you're at the head of one with the much more prominent national shared providers 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 extra importantly from 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 of the shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together from the last two several years. The full business case was accepted by the Research Councils in line with CSR07 [Comprehensive Spending Review 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 solutions live during the IT and strategic sourcing areas.