National Shared Services

Shared Services is a key enabler of public sector reform and has been identified as one of five key workstreams in Scotland’s Efficient Government programme. The adoption of Shared Services models is expected to play a significant role in delivering long term financial savings and driving up service quality and consistency across Scottish local government.

To date, individual authorities and partnerships have made progress on specific shared services initiatives. The National Shared Services Board (NSSB) has been established to maximise the realisation of benefits at a national level, with a focus on a smaller number of higher impact collaborative projects. The work of this Board is supported centrally through programme management, knowledge management and project delivery teams within the Improvement Service, with a wide variety of projects being taken forward by groups of local authorities. The National Shared Services Board (NSSB) includes representation from COSLA, SOLACE, the Scottish Government and the Improvement Service.

As shared services can mean different things to different people, the NSSB is exploring a number of models of sharing including collaborative delivery arrangements between councils and more traditional shared service delivery models. Some of these models enable distributed efficiencies, where organisations can share and maximise economies of scale by simplfying and standardising processes upon a common infrastructure without moving the phyisical delivery of services.

The objective of the NSSB is to provide a route for councils to deliver on the full potential of the Shared Services agenda. The programme will help all councils across Scotland to learn from national Shared Services projects and their use of best practices, and support all councils that wish to participate in delivering their own shared services efficiencies.

Information on the national projects currently funded through the National Shared Services Board can be found in Programme Information.

Contact Us

We would love to hear from you. The National Shared Services Programme can only succeed through full engagement and interaction with the Scottish local government community.
Please get in touch to:

• find out more about both current and future projects
• explore the potential to collaborate on these projects
• learn more about the tools and resources we are developing to support projects and spread best practice
• tell us about your interests and needs and how we can support you.

For further information, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 01506 775558.