Cabinet Office Chief Information Officer

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Objectives of the Shared Service Team

To deliver Transformational Government the public sector needs to adopt common approaches and sharing in a number of ways e.g. data sharing, common identity management, common standards, and corporate services (HR, Finance, IT, Procurement etc). By working more closely together, both across and within departments, government can save money, reduce waste and move closer to delivering services in the way that citizens want and expect.

Focussing initially on human resources and finance, the Shared Service Team are working with central government departments to develop shared service plans in order to make efficiency savings, become more effective and improve the employee experience.

Efficiency A potential 20% per year in HR and finance costs will be saved, with similar savings expected in other potential areas for sharing.

Effectiveness
Management information, transparency and visibility of departmental resource allocation will be improved. Significant improvements to key business processes, business critical information and IT systems. Better added value from the government’s top managers as they are freed from responsibility for transaction processing.

Employee Experience
Corporate services will become more professional and will make the civil service a better place to transact business for all staff. The establishment of shared service centres will provide better trained and more highly motivated staff that can develop a clearer career path in delivering corporate service functions. This will produce a more flexible government machinery with the capability and readiness to deliver future reform and change.

To help create a public service which is able to release as much resource to front–line delivery as possible the Team will:

  1. Work proactively with related initiatives, such as the Treasury’s Operational Efficiency Programme, in maximising the value for money of corporate public services.
  2. Continue to work towards a pan-Government move to a shared service culture and the creation of a healthy internal market for providers and customers of shared services.
  3. Continue to focus effort with Treasury upon tackling barriers to shared services in government, in particular those relating to VAT and issues regarding buying and selling services between departments.
  4. Work with practitioners and with the government Heads of Profession across the shared service community to establish some common benchmarks for use in comparing and contrasting shared corporate service performance.