IT directors balk at idea of financial penalties being used to
accelerate large-scale schemes.
Local authority IT directors have voiced opposition to Ian
Watmore's announcement that large-scale shared services projects
between councils will become mandatory. Senior IT management
condemned any attempt by central government to mandate the use of
shared services centres where councils would have to pool resources
with each other.
The Society of IT Management's president, Angela Waite, said,
"If central government wants to encourage us to join shared
services centres, it would seem to be nonsense to attach a
financial penalty as an incentive. I do not think it is necessary
to mandate shared services."
Watmore, who is head of the prime minister's delivery unit, told
a Socitm conference last month that "it was no longer optional to
share" and that local authorities should expect the forthcoming
Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) to assume that large-scale
shared services were already a reality.
The CSR sets spending levels for local authorities and the rest
of the public sector, for rolling three-year periods. The next
review will set spending from 2008 to 2011.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which is charged with
getting value for money from public spending, also warned last
month that councils could not continue to work on their own.
The OGC's chief executive, John Oughton, said that councils had
already announced 130 shared services centres, "and the business
case for them all can't work".
Surrey County Council's head of IT, John Gladman, said, "I will
only support it [shared services] if councils are helped with extra
funding to pay for the cost of the change programme to implement
it."
Geoff Connell, deputy head of ICT at the London Borough of
Newham, said shared services centres had yet to take off because of
"political unwillingness to lose local employment" and "because the
most advanced authorities can end up carrying the least advanced,
accelerating the poor but holding back the good".
Sunderland Council's corporate head of IT, Steve Williams, said,
"It's very difficult for people within an organisation to conceive
of giving away their core business - revenue and benefits, and
council tax collection."
Local authorities are represented on central government's Chief
Information Officer Council by two council IT directors. Jos
Creese, a member of the CIO Council and Hampshire County Council's
IT director, said, "If we simply target large-scale collaboration,
it will be harder and take longer than if we do smaller projects
that will provide benefits right now."
Cardiff Council has recently implemented a SAP system across
many of its back-office functions and does not believe being forced
into shared services would deliver major savings. Its head of
information systems, Crispin O'Connell, said, "We are not going to
want to take out our payroll system and share it with someone else.
Even if we brought other authorities in, the savings would not be
that great."
Back-office services, which could be run from a shared services
centre, account for a relatively small proportion of council
spending, he said.
The shared services projects that have already been set up
around the UK occured because the councils involved were at the
same point in their IT upgrading cycle, said Socitm members.
The joint procurement of an Oracle customer relationship
management application by 10 Staffordshire councils for example
occured because none of them had previously procured a CRM
system.