Chief Information Officer
The sector planning team works with public sector organisations to produce a coherent, challenging but pragmatic series of sector plans to implement the shared services agenda in government and in the wider public sector.
The Vision
It is clear that there are major gains to be made by transforming corporate services (e.g. HR and Finance) in the public sector. Shared services can assist with this transformation, and can also help government move towards common standards and practices within HR and Finance. The Sector Planning Team are working with departments, agencies and wider government organisations to help them in their adoption of services.
How do we get there?
There are more than 1300 organisations in the UK public sector. These organisations employ well over 5 million people. Most of these are relatively small autonomous bodies. In order to enable organisations to realise the maximum benefit from Shared corporate services, the Cabinet Office Shared Services Team are working with departments to develop common approaches to shared services and share best practice.
Nine sector plans are being developed to draw out what each sector can gain from shared services and what needs to be done to achieve these benefits. The nine sectors are:
The five features usually required to facilitate the sharing of coroprate services in UK Government are:
What is expected from government organisations?
What do Shared Services Sector Plans include?
Sector plans detail the current landscape; the objectives to be achieved through sharing; a blueprint of the future shared service organisations (including a transition plan to get to the future state); expected benefits and planned investments; and the risks and issues that might arise from sharing.
To date, seven of the nine sectors have completed their draft plans with the remaining two due to be submitted by September.
The Plans will form part of the CIO Annual Report to be published in November 2006.
What other assistance is offered?
Every six weeks the team runs a Shared Services Briefing session for those engaged in developing and implementing shared services sector plans. These briefings are an opportunity for key stakeholders across government to hear about the progress being made, understand the key issues being addressed, to ask questions and to share experience from their particular sectors with others.
The team is also responsible for activities aimed at removing real or perceived barriers to sharing services. These barriers include the application of VAT, headcount caps and procurement rules.
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