SSON Roundtable Discussion - Uk Community Sector Shared Expert services - Exactly where Now and Where by Following?

Sharing products and services has risen up the agendas in the UK's national ?http://www.vimle.com/ and local governments in recent times, propelled by political and fiscal traits too as by far more concrete factors such as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Effectiveness Critique and Sir David Varney's report on transformational governing administration. In an attempt to toss some gentle on new developments also to study where by shared products and services may be headed in foreseeable future, SSON convened a roundtable debate involving a gaggle of practitioners and advisors at local and national stage, chaired by SSON's on the web editor Jamie Liddell. The outcomes had been, in fact, illuminating...

Attending had been:

Tony Isaacs Programme Supervisor Warwickshire Immediate Partnership The Warwickshire Direct Partnership is often a shared companies programme comprising all 6 community 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 Products and services Browne Jacobson Browne Jacobson is one of your 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 Companies Survey '08, one of your most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared services while in the British isles.

Peter Telford Chief Executive Officer Research Councils United kingdom Shared Solutions Centre Research Councils United kingdom (RCUK) is really a strategic partnership between the seven Uk Research Councils. RCUK was established in 2002 to enable the Councils to work together additional 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 Nearby Govt Improvement Specialist and Shared Products and services Author Ray Tomkinson is the author of Shared Providers in Local Federal government: Improving Service Delivery (Gower, 2007). Ray managed the Welland Partnership shared companies 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 money gains which will be passed back to research and the research community, but probably 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' services 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 from the shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together within the last two 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 future year. We already have some providers live inside the IT and strategic sourcing areas.