Local authority IT directors are in agreement that their
employees' resistance to change is the greatest obstacle to
starting large-scale shared services projects.
Responding to a report from the Society of IT Management
(Socitm), which warned councils about the issue of employee
resistance to shared services, local government IT chiefs told
Computer Weekly the report had it right.
"Shared services are delivered by people, and disheartened
people deliver bad services. This is not a reason for avoiding the
issue altogether. Councils exist to deliver services, not to employ
people," said Steve Williams, corporate head of IT at Sunderland
City Council.
The report said, "There will be resistance from teams required
to transfer from supporting individual services into a common
support service within a single organisation. Transferring teams
from multiple organisations will be more problematic."
Councils such as Glasgow, Newcastle and Surrey have already set
up common support services for their front-line departments.
However, few councils have shared services with other local
authorities.
An exception to that rule is Suffolk County Council and Mid
Suffolk District Council, which have been sharing finance, HR and
IT services since 2004 in a joint venture involving BT.
Suffolk County Council's chief executive, Mike More, said the
Socitim report struck a chord as the authorities had encountered
"low-level grumbling" since the move.
"If a manager has been used to having an HR team that combines
strategic and transactional functions working around the corner
from them, how do we convince them that it is more efficient to run
HR from a [more remote] shared services centre?" said More.
So far this year, Barnsley, Birmingham, Rochdale and Swansea
councils have all transferred employees to external shared services
centres, but the employees have mostly been moved to locations
close to their old places of work.
Another key project led by local government was the introduction
in July of the single non-emergency number in five police force
areas in England and Wales. In Northumbria, the project uses shared
services centres run by Newcastle City Council and Sunderland City
Council to handle calls.
Williams said, "Without taking anything away from the fine
project management, the fact that this was a new service made the
collaboration much easier."
The Socitm report also warned that central government was
failing to give local authorities enough leadership on shared
services. "Central government is committed to the economies of
scale argument, but to date seems to lack leadership, advice about
implementation and ideas to take sharing forward in a pragmatic
way," it said.
The Cabinet Office was due to publish a shared services plan for
local government - alongside plans for the rest of the public
sector - in mid-November, but it has yet to be issued.
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