SSON Roundtable Discussion Uk Community Sector Shared Companies Wherever Now and Where by Next?

Sharing expert services has risen up the agendas with the UK's countrywide and native governments in recent years, propelled by political and economic trends ?reference  as well as by extra concrete aspects these kinds of as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Effectiveness Evaluation and Sir David Varney's report on transformational government. Within an make an effort to toss some mild on new developments and also to take a look at in which shared services can be headed in potential, SSON convened a roundtable debate involving a gaggle of practitioners and advisors at neighborhood and national degree, chaired by SSON's on the net editor Jamie Liddell. The outcomes were, indeed, illuminating...

Attending had been:

Tony Isaacs Programme Manager Warwickshire Direct Partnership The Warwickshire Immediate Partnership can be a shared products and services programme comprising all 6 area authorities while 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 Products and services Browne Jacobson Browne Jacobson is one of the largest law firms inside 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 Expert services Survey '08, one in the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared expert services within the British isles.

Peter Telford Chief Executive Officer Research Councils United kingdom Shared Providers Centre Research Councils United kingdom (RCUK) is really a strategic partnership between the seven United kingdom 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 of the Government's objectives for science and innovation.

Ray Tomkinson Nearby Govt Improvement Specialist and Shared Expert services Author Ray Tomkinson is the author of Shared Solutions in Community Authorities: 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 from the extra prominent nationwide shared products and 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 fiscal gains which will be passed back to research and the research community, but probably additional 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' products and 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 in the shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together in the last two many years. The full business case was accepted by the Research Councils in line with CSR07 [Comprehensive Spending Critique 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 products and services live within 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 govt at the time. We made a bid as the Warwickshire On the internet 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 try and 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 regional authorities to save, there is an overriding need to make things far more effective and a lot more efficient, and shared companies is seen as being one key method of doing that - with the consequence that we are in a position now wherever 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 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 providers [Browne Jacobson's Shared Expert services Survey '08] that certainly efficiency savings and improvements inside the way providers are delivered are key drivers, but what you've identified as a lack of money was one with the real inhibitors, because in order to deliver shared 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 products and services stream before any effectiveness 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 may well need to spend money, over the period following that it's anticipated that there will be savings. And Warwickshire could possibly be different, but we don't necessarily regard it just as pounds saved: it could be efficiencies. So it's non-financial benefits in addition as monetary ones.

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

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

As was being made abundantly clear a minute or two ago, regional authorities have different ways of approaching their economic 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 providers 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 services but not because of fiscal pressures. They're looking at it because they want to make service improvements, to improve resilience of solutions, and also give opportunities to create new expert services. 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 inside the private sector, area authority and now central govt so I suppose I can absolutely empathise with the previous comments. I think the compulsion from central government 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 where by you can actually effect a transformation and deliver efficiency and effectiveness. At the community governing administration amount, it is a lot more difficult to create critical mass - which then makes the funding routes and the benefits probably far more difficult to determine inside the early stages.