Published on the 16/03/2011 | Written by Newsdesk
New Zealand’s public sector is lagging behind the UK in the take-up of shared services, says a British provider, and could learn some lessons from its adoption in rural Scotland…
A UK expert, in New Zealand to broker dialogue between the two governments, says our public sector is ready for shared services.
James Mayo is head of public sector desktop at Fujitsu UK & Ireland. “Shared services is further behind in New Zealand than it is in the UK, but conversations are starting to happen, which is great,” he says.
Shared services initiatives in the public sector founder when organisations attempt to standardise business processes across multiple departments, says Mayo. The less ambitious approach he sees here results in more immediate success.
“It doesn’t deliver the transformational savings, but it introduces shared services to departments and providers, so there’s a learning process culturally that provides building blocks for moving forward.”
Shared services become difficult to implement when expectations are overly ambitious, says Mayo. The UK government is seeking savings of more than 25 percent in ICT, and this demands transformational change.
“There’ll be a shared services tipping point in New Zealand where there’ll be a choice to make: whether you want to make those step-changes – and whether you need to from a cost point of view. New Zealand has an advantage because you don’t have the scale we have in the UK. You also don’t have the same level of variance between departments.”
The expense of service delivery to rural areas will be a constraining factor in New Zealand, as it is in the UK. “High-speed broadband is critical for virtualised desktop or thin client environments where there are savings but only if the network is up to it,” he says.
At just over five million, Scotland’s population is larger than New Zealand’s but Mayo likens the challenges for rural New Zealand to those faced by the Highlands Council. “We’ve had to create some innovative technical solutions and online access for a wide range of services to the citizens in remote locations,” he says. “There are some models that can be imported to New Zealand.”
Changes are underway to government ICT procurement in New Zealand, with a move to a panel of approved suppliers and delivery frameworks. Not surprisingly, Fujitsu supports the introduction of such frameworks: In the UK, Fujitsu is the exclusive, pre-approved provider on one of them. “We’ll look to those frameworks to help us offer our full portfolio into the New Zealand market,” says Mayo. “We’ll be looking to give the New Zealand government access to the full range of Fujitsu services.”
Budgetary pressures often accelerate government shared services adoption, but Mayo says he’s heard less cost savings rhetoric here and seen fewer signs technology innovation has been sidelined as it has in the UK.
“I get a sense there’s slightly more pragmatism,” he says.
“There’s a more value-oriented mindset here still.”
In the UK a change in administration and the global financial crisis drove government ICT spending cuts. Here, that value-oriented mindset may not survive the economic aftershocks from the Christchurch earthquake.
Despite cost advantages, the shared services approach is not yet bedded in. The UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), one of the departments under the Fujitsu shared services framework, have just confirmed that they wish to bring the desktop contract, awarded in February 2010, to an end. Fujitsu, in confirming the termination, did not have any further comment at this stage.
