Conclusive evidence of shared service uptake is hard to come by, admits Ray Tomkinson, a specialist in public sector performance improvement and author of new book ‘Shared Services in Local Government’. “It has been relatively unstructured, but it’s probably doubled over three years,” he says. “Most authorities are just getting on with it without calling it shared services.
“The apparent demise of the 101 single telephone number to access non-emergency public services and the reluctance of the Local Government White Paper to come out clearly on the roles of local authorities, the debate over unitary councils and two-tier pathfinders all add to the mass of complicated signals – there is no obvious national picture.” Most chief executives, “with so much else to concentrate on”, have yet to see shared services as their priority, Tomkinson believes.
Register of shared services
His way forward would be to create a register of shared services, use annual efficiency statements to spread the word, set up a national shared services centre and to enable nationwide take-up through Invest to Save funds, based on best practice. Jonathan Nulty, an experienced shared services practitioner in the local government sector, has witnessed the conflicting priorities and initiatives that make it harder to free up people to commit to shared services. “The raft of directives has taken the eye off the ball,” he says. “You need real leadership from the top and dedicated management.”
Central back office
You also need the realignment of IT systems. Surrey County Council has centralised a range of back-office functions including finance, procurement, business intelligence, recruitment, employee services, payroll, data management and training administration.
“The big shared services blocks like Surrey have the advantage of everyone sharing the same IT platform, planning for expansion,” says Nulty. “It will pay for itself eventually, but even with prudential borrowing, people are reticent.”
North West Centre of Excellence Regional Director Colin Cram, now supporting local authority efforts across the region, says people become disillusioned if they think it is just about cost reduction and it doesn’t deliver. “Don’t underestimate the value of looking for better ways of doing things,” he says. “The work that goes into change management and analysis is invaluable.”
Inevitably there are battles to be had over governance and historical baggage. Councillors – even many officers – feel less than friendly to counterparts on the other side of the boundary. Politics, especially when councils see where the jobs are going, is still scuppering some well thought-out schemes. “This is probably going to get worse,” says Professor Bovaird. “We have had a lengthy economic boom in most of the country. If a recession arrives, as is likely, this barrier will get bigger.
“It is possible to be too gloomy about prospects for shared services. We shouldn’t minimise the extent to which local authorities have genuinely explored partnership working with all sorts of organisations. Okay, so not a lot has happened yet, but in local government things often simmer below the surface for a long time before the action takes off.”
David Allaby is Editor of Public Servant, a monthly magazine which focuses on the challenge of transforming public services. Before this, he was editor of Defra’s Energy, Resource, Environmental and Sustainable Management magazine
For practical guidance on these issues visit: www.idea.gov.uk/sharedservices
