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eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001

UK: Public sector could save £40bn

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Published: 13 December 2005
A group of leading IT and consultancy companies has said the government could save £40bn over 10 years by sharing services in human resources and finance

The Buy IT Shared Services Advisory Group, which includes companies such as Accenture, Capgemini and SBS, has made the estimate following a series of meetings with government bodies in the Shared Services Forum (SSF). They were organised at the request of the Office of Government Commerce to highlight the activities of early adopters in sharing services.

Fritz Janssen, chief executive officer of the Buy IT Best Practice Network, said the £40bn figure is a longer term projection than the £20bn savings demanded by chancellor Gordon Brown up to the end of 2006-07. Brown's savings cover a wider scope of activity.

Buy IT has issued a set of guidelines that point out that 2.5% of the government's total expenditure goes on human resources and finance services, compared with 0.75% in the best private sector organisations. Sharing services could reduce the proportion and produce the savings of £40bn.

Among their other conclusions are that:

  • support functions such as those above plus IT, legal, property and procurement services should be the first targets for sharing;
  • it makes little sense for 1,300 government bodies in the UK to run all their own support services.

"The interesting thing about this is that 20 of the big players in the advisory field are putting their names to one document," Janssen told Government Computing News on 12 December 2005. "The key findings that have come out of it may not be surprising, but they are interesting to David Myers and his team (the shared services team in the e-Government Unit).

"Shared services are not only about saving money, but stepping stones to transformation across government."

Janssen said it would not be right to provide one shared services operation for all of government, but that the guidelines could help organisations to decide on which model is best for them.

"It's likely that you will have different models for different groups," he said. "Something for healthcare, something for local authorities, something for the Home Office and so on. There is not one model to fit all."

The BuyIT Advisory Group is going to look at the strengths of different models over the next year.

The SSF comprises 21 departments and agencies, including the Cabinet Office, Office of Government Commerce, Department of Health and HM Revenue and Customs.

Quelle: KableNET, 13.12.2005

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