Government IT projects are prone to overreach
themselves, inspired, as they often are, by a faith in technology
for technology's sake. There is a tendency to reach for centralist
solutions, where a more organic and piecemeal approach would be
more effective. But not always.
Shared services are delivering real benefits in the public
sector. And their use is being driven by the departments at the
sharp end of service delivery.
In the abstract, the idea of one government department buying in
a service from another seems like a good idea bound to come to
grief on the rocky realities of territorial politics.
However, if multinational companies are content with "sharing"
out-of-the-box enterprise software across regions and divisions,
should not that be so of UK government departments?
And, indeed, IT-enabled practices that have proved successful in
the private sector are being replicated in government, more or less
naturally, to achieve specific business goals.
One example is NHS Shared Business Services, which provides
finance, accounting, and payroll services to more than 100 health
organisations. There is no prescriptive mandate for NHS trusts to
join Shared Business Services it is a pragmatic matter, but one
that arguably has benefits over wholesale outsourcing.
Another example is the disaster recovery consortium in Wales,
which brings together three councils in the creation of a service
that goes beyond what each could have afforded on their own.
And we report in this issue that
Edinburgh City Council is considering taking its IT
infrastructure partnership with BT, established in 2001, and from
which it says it has derived cost savings, to market as a shared
service.
Government IT - it's not all bad news.