Over the last decade there has been much talk about sharing services across the public sector. One staggers to imagine how much money has been spent on consultancy assignments, management time and aborted projects. It will be the equivalent to a significant public service delivery. And there have been the spectacle projects that have actually resulted in increased costs!
There have, of course, been some excellent examples of successful shared services initiatives. Indeed the majority of local authorities in England currently share some services with other local authorities and in some cases such as South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse district councils have fully merged their the managerial and professional entities whilst retaining separate independent political administrations. Within Whitehall and the wider central government family there are examples of shared services making a difference.
However, I would argue that the rhetoric for shared services has far outpaced the reality. This may be changing as the reality of a decade of less public money begins to strike home. There is good reason for the slowness for major shared services to have taken off. Some of these are political, some a result of professional managers’ self-preservation, some because the original vision was too ambitious and too complex to deliver, and others simply because the business case failed to make sense. The latter is often the case when the full costs of implementation, the loss of local employment and the complexity of governance are taken into account.
Over engineered, over ambitious scope – and under ambitious lacklustre proposals – and oversold shared service initiatives have often brought the concept itself into disrepute.
Often when the subject of shared services is mentioned a picture of “back office” support services like human resources, financial administration, IT and procurement is conjured up. Of course, for many local authorities and other public sector agencies the elimination of their entire “back office” services would fall far short of achieving the budget cuts. For others the financial benefits of moving to shared services are not large in the scheme of things – especially for small bodies – especially when some residual resource will be required for “client” and strategic activities to warrant the pain of the change. This is not always the case and individual bodies have to consider their own business cases. The drive for shared services may be wider than revenue savings. They can offer greater resilience, investment in new technology and systems, access to expertise and allow managers in the participating bodies to concentrate on their core functions.
A shared approach can be applied to a much wider range of activities and assets than those used to deliver support services. The sharing of specialist staff and specialist services an enable individual agencies and authorities to have access to people and resources that on their own they would struggle to afford or be able to attract and retain high quality personnel. The same applies to specialist equipment – for example shared police helicopters and forensic services. “Total Place” and more recently “community budgets” have demonstrated the opportunities and benefits of sharing buildings – to save money, release capital receipts, enable investment, make public access easier and act as a catalyst to spur greater collaborative working; creating joint frontline teams to work with clients and communities; to eliminate duplication and save money. There can be little doubt that we shall see more of these approaches in the coming few years.
There is no reason why the public sector should not consider involving the voluntary and community sectors in their shared service initiatives. And in some cases the business sector too.
As the public sector considers the options available to it to address the biggest public expenditure cuts for over eighty years it must consider all options. It will need to be prepared to do different things in different ways. Shared services, joint initiatives and collaborate working across the public sector and with the business, social, and voluntary and community sectors will all have roles to play. None of the alone will be “silver bullets” – for these only exist in a fantasy world.
When public bodies including local authorities are reviewing the opportunity for shared services they should ask a number of key questions before taking the plunge.
They must be satisfied that the approach will be consistent with their values and objectives. The business case has to be holistic and take into account the full costs including the human costs. They must be assured that they can secure the right quality of service. Accountability and governance arrangements need to be appropriate. If the business sector is to be involved in some form of outsourcing or joint venture they will need to be satisfied that the contracts will deliver the right outcomes on the right terms. Usually the sharing bodies will need a legal agreement to underpin their partnership too. They will need to have stakeholder support and engagement.
I foresee much more shared service activity moving on from the rhetoric but not always in the manner that perhaps we have become conditioned too. The current emphasis on mutualism could be the key – there could be mutual benefits in public bodies working together for common goals. A real sense of “all in this together”!