Governments had for decades failed in their frustrated attempts to share back office services. But now a new initiative, which forms part of the Civil Service Reform Plan, is to use private sector expertise to save up to £600m a year for the taxpayer.
A new deal signed yesterday with outsourcing company arvato, will see the firm manage Independent Shared Service Centre One (ISSC1). This will be created from the existing Department for Transport (DfT) shared service centre in Swansea.
Arvato will initially provide back office services to the DfT and its agencies before it moves to provide HR, procurement, payroll and finance transactional services across government, cutting costs through economies of scale.
A second Independent Shared Service Centre is to open in 2014, which could see services provided to more public sector bodies as well as businesses in the private sector.
"Although it's perfectly obvious that sharing services makes sense, successive governments have been unable to make progress on this for the past decade," said Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.
"The taxpayer should no longer have to foot the bill for duplicative services. Instead departments will be able to focus on providing services rather than managing back office functions."
Stephen Kelly, head of the Cabinet Office Efficiency and Reform Group, said using a private company to run the centre would allow the government to "maximise the economies of scale that arise when departments pull together".
"Whilst we seek to build on experience gained through running shared service centres within the public sector, the time has come to move away from the fragmented and constrained model that has existed to date, instead harnessing the advantages of commercial experience and industry best practice," he said.
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Quelle/Source: Public Service, 01.03.2013
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