Shared Services – A Recipe for Government Efficiency
I am encouraged by the current emphasis on increasing government efficiency and reducing the cost of government. One can only hope that this will carry through the 2012 elections and become an integral part of an ongoing dialogue about how we can improve the economic health and well being of our nation. Agencies are cutting travel, pay has been frozen, a hire freeze has been imposed and the scope of constrtuction and IT projects have been reduced. Unfortunately, this is not enough. I am dismayed by the lack of a cohesive, long term strategy for reducing the cost of government in a way that will least impact public services. Left to their own devices, most agencies will take a haphazard approach to absorbing budget cuts that will likely do more harm than good in the long run. I liken this to surgery with a hack saw in that the long term survivability of the patient is in serious doubt. Enter shared services, a proven strategy for making government more efficient without impacting public services.
How importance is a service recovery plan? Ask Sony.
How important is a service recovery plan? Ask Sony.
On April 28, I got an email from Sony telling me that the Playstation Network had been hacked and that my personal information along with that of thousands if not millions of other Playstation Network subscribers had been compromised. The email read in part:
Managing a Government Shared Services Portfolio
Some activities are more suited for shared services than others. How do you determine whether an activity is a good fit for shared services? Ask yourself the following questions about the activity.
Customer Service in Government Shared Services Organizations
To grasp the importance of customer interfaces you must first broaden your thinking to take in all the ways that a shared services organization interfaces with the consumers of its services. Every one of these points of interaction are interfaces. An intuitive customer interface speaks to the ease and value, from the customer’s viewpoint of course, of that interaction.
Process Lessons Learned Implementing Government Shared Services
Following up on the strategy mistakes to avoid when implementing government shared services is the following list of process mistakes that should also be avoided.
1The least offensive process is often the least efficient process. In the desire to build unanimous agreement between stakeholders and affected communities with diverse interests compromise in designing shared services processes can result in inefficiencies. When this happens in the best case scenario processes are re-engineered later to address these inefficiencies. More likely though the processes become entrenched and positions harden.
2 Validate service level indicators (KPI’s) before transition to ensure they are realistic and attainable.
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