Realising the Vision

Part of a series of papers on Leaner Government

The idea of shared services in the UK’s central government began with a vision to improve efficiency and customer service in the public sector. From the Gershon Review in 2004 to the publication of Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology, the message was clear: the public sector needs to become more efficient and cost effective.

In 2008, HM Treasury began another efficiency drive, seeking around £5bn in savings while improving back office and IT systems, and making better use of public sector properties.

Shared Services have a key role to play in achieving these goals, but there are significant implementation challenges to be tackled. This paper highlights six of the most difficult challenges and proposes a number of ways to address them, based on IBM’s learnings from successful implementations in both Private and Public sectors.

Read the full paper here (PDF, 89KB)

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