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’.