Shared? Services?
or
Sheep and Goats
James Cornford
james.cornford@ncl.ac.uk
Nothing New?
Shared Services
ERP
SOA
Grid
ASP
Utility
computing
Web
2.0
Thought for Today
The reputation, name, and appearance, the
usual measure and weight of a thing, what it
counts for—originally almost always wrong and
arbitrary, thrown over things like a dress and
altogether foreign to their nature and even to
their skin—all this grows from generation unto
generation, merely because people believe in it,
until it gradually grows to be part of the thing and
turns into its very body. What at first was
appearance becomes in the end, almost
invariably, the essence and is effective as such.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, #58
From: Emma Yates [mailto:emma@publicsectorforums.co.uk]
Sent: 22 September 2006 11:16
To: Rob Wilson
Subject: It's that time again.....Invitation to speak, Shared Services event, December 6th
Importance: High
Hi Rob,
How are you? Hope you’ve had a good week. We had an event yesterday in Birmingham so it’s been
a busy few days, definitley ready for the weekend!
You might remember a couple of weeks ago you gave me some feedback regarding a Shared
Services event we’re holding on December 6th at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton. If you’d like to join
us on the day to give a 25minute case study presentation, we’d love to have you on board once
again.
Based on the initial response from potential delegates I would expect the agenda to cover the
following areas:
……. [OMITTED See next slide]…..
I hope you’re able to join us and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind Regards
Emma
Emma Yates
Events Manager
Public Sector Forums
(e) emma@publicsectorforums.co.uk
(w) www.publicsectorforums.co.uk
What were they interested in?
…Based on the initial response– how are benefits and improvement is measured and quantified
- Information from potential delegates I would expect the agenda to cover the following areas:
- Benefits realisation Sharing/Management:
a) Increased complexity in information sharing - data protection, confidentiality
b )How to justify the sharing of personal information under the Data Protection Act,
c) Secondly, ensuring that your organisation has good records management in order that the sharing
can be as effective as possible
d) Legality of information sharing
- Joint service delivery between public bodies (e.g Police)
- Building the business case
- How to make partnership working a success – what are the Pros / Cons.
- Resolving different stakeholder objectives
- Preserving/enhancing the customer experience
- Sharing / transferring staff - common Terms and Conditions, career development, etc.
- How to manage and keep control of your Shared Services:
a) choosing a responsible owner of a shared services
b) avoiding confusion in responsibility - line management, decision making etc
- Challenges of working in a 2-tier structure: service responsibility / common IT platforms or not / lack
of common process
- The practical models of shared services – eg creation of an independent organisation by authorities
on an equal footing, a service hub approach with smaller authorities 'buying in' services provided by
larger authorities, private sector involvement as a strategic partner etc
- Retaining a local community focus for services where the pressure is to regionalize….
Transformation…
•
After e-government… transformation
–
–
–
•
making services citizen and business centred;
delivering a step change in the professionalism with which
technology is delivered to government departments and
encouraging a shared service approach to release
efficiencies across the system and support delivery more
focussed on customer needs.
The magic ingredient… shared services
–
–
–
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Employee Experience
www.cio.gov.uk/shared_services
Do we need 435 Local Government
CRM Systems?
Single
Local
Authority
Many
Local
Authorities
A
B
C
D
Customer Services
A
B
C
A
B
C
D
Customer Services
D
Customer Services
Shared Customer Services
Or up to 435 Local authorities “trading” their excess capacity?
A familiar imperative & rhetoric
• Governments need shared services now.1
• Sharing a service provides the opportunity to reduce
waste and inefficiency by reorganising or reusing assets
and sharing investments with others. Processes,
facilities, maintenance contracts and management effort
to name but a few are likely to be duplicated across
different departments. These could be organised more
effectively – either local or nationally and could free
resources that could be re–invested in citizen–focussed
activities and the improvement of services.2
• governance and cultural issues are significant barriers.3
Sources 1. Accenture, Driving High Performance in Government: Maximizing the Value of Public-Sector Shared
Services, January 2005
[http://www.accenture.com/Global/Services/By_Industry/Government/R_and_I/DrivingServices.htm]; and,
2. & 3 www.cio.gov.uk/shared_services.
CIO.gov Toolkit
“Commitment” & “natural groupings”
• Why should this work now?
• “What has been missing in earlier attempts is a
coordinated commitment. We believe that our
focus on sectors is the correct approach to take
as it takes a pan-departmental approach but
looks for natural groupings of organisations.”
Dave Myers, Director, Shared Services Programme, Cabinet Office eGov monitor, Published
Monday, 5 December, 2005 - 15:00 [http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/3845] added emphasis
• How is commitment co-ordinated and by whom?
• What is a “natural grouping” and how do you
identify one?
Adding some lines
Business Development
BO
FO
Shared
Services
Infrastructure
The Head of Transformation’s white board
Services, Services
Services as the new “solutions”
– Everything is a “service” – or a project – or both!
• Dialectical service-isation of computing
– Service-isation to overcome past “failure” to give ‘users what
they what’ – a.k.a. ‘customer focus’….
– …but also the importation of manufacturing/ engineering
concepts into services (e.g., service design, service science)
• What is the status of knowledge about the
customer?
– “Ontological” (computer scientists)
– “Epistemological” (some social scientists)
– “Methodological” (ANT models)
Sharing and Sharing
• Sharing what?
–
–
–
–
Costs
Assets
Risks
Responsibility
• All of which presumes…
– Sharing Information…
• Which presumes
– Sharing classifications and Interpretations of the
world…
Sharing and sharing 2
• A dialogue
– S: Daddy, Tom is not sharing me
– F: Are sharing with Tom?
– S: No. But Tom’s not sharing with me!
• What kind of sharing?
–
–
–
–
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”
“Jointly and severally liable”
“All for one and one for all”
“From each according to her means to each
according to her needs”
– Etc,.
Empirics – Higher Education
• UK HE…
• A “natural ” grouping?
• JISC “Information Environment”
– Why does nobody use (all of) it?
– Bad assumptions about homogenous institutions and
users
• e.g., ukEduPerson
• “University in a Box”
– Spin-off existing SAP +
– But is this outsourcing competitive advantage?
– Who would buy this?
Aside: A University?
•
•
•
•
abstraction,
modularization,
loose coupling of modules,
communication via well defined interfaces
…also Thomas Wieberneit’s
definition of “Enterprise” SOA
Shared Service State
• Thomas Hobbes
– The state is a unified entity…
– ….but is everywhere in
pieces.
• But are these the ‘right’
pieces?
• And how do we ‘put them
back together’ again?
Questions, Questions
How are things
rendered “sharable”?
How are notions such
as ‘core’ and ‘context,’
‘routine’, or ‘commodity’
business defined?
Is ‘shared services’ just
a new names for a
common practice or are
they something new?
What do shared
services mean for “end
users”?
What is the notion of
the “state as
enterprise” that is
articulated here?
What’s the relationship
with ASP or Apps on
Tap, utility/pervasive/
grid computing, SOA,
Web 2.0?
Afterthought
Society becomes more capable of collective movement,
at the same time that each of its elements has more
freedom of movement. This solidarity resembles that
which we observe among the higher animals. Each
organ, in effect, has its special physiognomy, its
autonomy. And, moreover, the unity of the organism is
as great as the individuation of the parts is more
marked. Because of this analogy, we propose to call the
solidarity which is due to the division of labour, organic.
Durkheim, Division of Labour