Tuesday 12 June 2012

2012 - a ‘tipping point’ for public sector shared service activity?

There is a rumour going around that 2012 is a ‘tipping point’ for public sector shared service activity to accelerate in a big way.

Some support can be found in the sudden growth in Blue Light shared service activity across the UK, the creation by the minister, Carl Sergeant, in Wales of six collaboration sub-regions and the publication of the HEFCE Collaborations, Alliances and Mergers report.

The English Local Government Association map also illustrates that 219 councils are currently engaged in 143 various partnerships, from assets- to-waste and evidences that over 80 of them are up and running, and have made cashable savings of almost £100m to date. So whilst the track record in shared services show they are difficult to do, emerging numbers of councils are beginning to land, cash-based efficiency gains.

Another example to support the rumour is that in the FE and HE sector, in 2011 over £16m in partnership seed-corn grants were released into collaboration projects by the HEFCE, the Association of Colleges, 157 Group and LSIS across 2011.

And, this was before the announcement by the Chancellor in his Autumn statement that the Government will introduce a VAT exemption for shared services, between organisations in Further and Higher Education and charities. The inability for these sectors to reclaim VAT on partnership activity has been a major stumbling block. Now there is nothing to hold them back. Lemming-like they will be racing to find partners on the e-harmony shared service website, registering as a “bubbly, blond learning partner” or under “wealthy university seeks love and fun”.

In addition, there now exists a cohort of professional shared service practitioners who will be able to slap their qualifications on the interview panel’s desk, crush all competition, and win their next job as over 40 shared service practitioners have now either completed or set out on the postgraduate certificate in shared services at Canterbury Christ Church University.

So what of new things in 2012? Well in terms of partnership projects, there is new software emerging that will do away with excel spreadsheets and post-it note process activity. The software takes about five days to fire-up with all the variables that effect a service. Then you can feed it all kinds of staffing, process and financial scenarios and it will spit out options in minutes, as opposed to the weeks or months and huge expense of traditional options evaluations.

Then there is collaborative innovation. Where 2+2=5. The delivery of services in a way we currently cannot imagine. The smashing of silos and formation of least expected alliances. For example in Staffordshire, 1,000 of the County’s staff are being TUPE’d into the NHS to deliver a single, £153m health and social care service. Also look at University of Plymouth and Plymouth Council’s development of a shared ICT service. Tipping point or not, ‘…the times they are changing’.