The National Shared Services Board (NSSB) was set up in April 2006 and, since then, Scottish local government has explored a wide range of shared services opportunities. The NSSB (made up of COSLA, SOLACE, the then Scottish Executive, and the Improvement Services) focused its efforts on a small number of strategic, high impact projects in the following areas:
- procurement
- shared services or shared capacity
- collaborative workforce planning and development
- shared specification/convergence in IT
A number of national shared services are now in place and are contributing to delivering savings and improving services.
- Scotland Excel - the local government procurement centre of excellence. Scotland Excel has 29 contracts available to all members with projected savings of £3.9m (5.9% of estimated spend). By end of 2009/10, 45 contracts will be in place with a value of £1bn.
- myjobscotland.gov.uk - the national recruitment portal for Scottish local government. Over 700 jobs a week are advertised on myjobscotland, which will release over £6m a year for front line delivery.
- Customer First - the Scottish Government-sponsored programme to improve public services by redesigning them around customers' needs. It has delivered the National Infrastructure, National Gazetteer, National Card Management Service and the National CRM. The Customer First infrastructure provides over 1.5m people with entitlement cards and has cumulatively saved £30m.
- Public Information Notices Portal (PINS) - a single online portal for all statutory public information notices that local authorities are legally required to publish.
Shared services have been closely, though not exclusively, tied to efficiency and the back office. From the start, the NSSB programme recognised that a back office focus would address less than 15% of councils' spending. The Diagnostic Pathway programme used a common model, tools and management framework to enable local authorities to explore support services/activities across all areas of the council including front line services. The Diagnostic looked at activities such as customer contact as well as HR and finance. More information on the Diagnostic Pathway is in the 'Improving Together' leaflet.
What next for shared services in Scottish local government?
The results from the Diagnostic so far show that business transformation within individual organisations will, in the medium term, significantly contribute to increasing productivity and cash releasing savings. Individual council transformation programmes will generate multi million pound annual savings in 4-5 years.
The programmes being developed from the Diagnostic begin to address the 85% of council resources that are within front line services such as social work and education. Transforming how these are delivered will have a higher impact in the current financial climate. Joining up and designing services around customers and outcomes will reduce the amount of back office and administrative functions needed.
Councils have shown that they are willing to share and work with each other and other business partners to deliver services. The programmes developed so far have shown that shared services can deliver benefits. However, it has also become clear that shared services are not an end in themselves but one part of transforming service delivery.
