If the public sector is to stand any chance at all of making the £15bn of savings set out in the operational efficiency programme, it has to accept that putting in place standardised and sustainable service delivery models marks the way forward.
This requires massive transformation and will happen only if public sector leaders and executive boards work collaboratively with suppliers to ensure targets can be met without sacrificing services.
If we focus on IT, where many of the savings are targeted to be made, one of the barriers to radical reform in the past has been that many public sector organisations believe their needs to be too specialised to be met by what might seem a one-size-fits-all approach. They have evolved with large outsourced models which require the management of a number of external supplier relationships. Coupled with their own internal complex chains of command, these models can never add up to efficiency or best practice.
Executive boards and their business managers will be rightly protective of their patch and of maintaining standards of service. It is up to chief information officers (CIO) to deliver some hard business facts.
In theory, if 90% of services can be standardised, then up to a 40% cost reduction can be achieved and, when implemented properly, this doesn't have to equal a decrease in the quality of service delivery offered.
The public sector finally has a working example of how simplified service models can not only bring savings but deliver increases in efficiency in the shape of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). It recently completed a two-year transformation programme to standardise services across its information and communications technology infrastructure, which entailed changing just about every bit of IT kit it owned.
The DWP transformation programme was successful because of a number of factors. First, it involved top-of-the-shop communication between the DWP and major suppliers, with the permanent secretary personally meeting senior managers in supplier organisations.
Despite the pressure on costs, this type of transformation programme can never be about beating suppliers with a big stick and discussions focused on how both organisations would work together and ensure the project was a win-win for both sides. Such communication presents an opportunity to clear outstanding arguments or legal wranglings so the project can begin with a clean sheet. Buy-in at this level clearly demonstrates that such change is going to take place and clear instruction from the top means the risk of mixed messages cascading down is eliminated.
A strong CIO is pivotal to a transformation programme of this level and they must have the leadership and communication skills to act as an effective interface between the executive board and suppliers. One of the first steps is to decide which services will be outsourced and which can be delivered internally.
As in the case of the DWP project, they must also be able to put in place a solid implementation team below them made up of senior internal managers who understand the daily needs and realities of each department in the organisation and its front line role. Another vital layer at the DWP was made up of business user groups in each department who fed back to the implementation team.
There is a huge amount of risk to service delivery when implementing change on this scale. The potential downtime involved in rationalising from seven data centres to two, for example, is considerable and has to be factored in.
The CIO is ultimately accountable but by identifying where the risk lies and communicating it clearly to the board, the implementation team and everyone involved in the project, that risk will be minimised.
With so much at stake and targets needing to be met, it should not be a case of asking 'where the buck stops' but rather of everyone understanding their roles and responsibilities - from the bottom to the very top.
Gary Bettis is director of IT advisory services, Serco Consulting
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
