Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Accepted
2021 strategy refresh significantly improved collaboration and functional leadership in shared services.
Conclusion
There has been a noticeable change in pace since the introduction of the 2021 strategy refresh.45 The Cabinet Office highlighted what was different, namely that government functions such as HR, finance and commercial had taken the lead and set standards for departments to use. It explained that departments were working together in clusters and accepting this leadership, whereas previously departments held their own views on how they would like to use these functions.46 The Department for Work & Pensions explained that its cluster had learned to work together more effectively. When the four departments in the cluster first came together to develop their 2021 Spending Review bid, everything was repeated a number of times as engagement took place with commercial, HR and investment committees in each department. Now they have a memorandum of understanding between the departments, a single programme senior responsible officer and a lead accounting officer.47 45 Q 1 46 Q 30 47 Q 86 Government Shared Services 15
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and is progressing the strategy through relationship management and extensive lessons learned initiatives, including sharing insights from other governments and programs, providing toolkits, and facilitating communities of best practice for clusters.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: June 2025 (following completion of procurements) This is mainly being progressed through the relationship management function. In the last few months, there have been a number of lessons learned events with clusters as they reach different milestones in their implementations. There is now a stock of lessons learned documents and tools for clusters to use. Examples include: • meetings have taken place with the Canadian Government to gain insight into their implementation of their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. • lessons from programmes such as Home Office Metis (Cloud ERP) programme have been incorporated into Cluster Business Cases. • within the Defence cluster, there is the civilian HR system ’MyHR’ which went live in February 2022. A lessons learned was completed, with reports of a positive impact on user experience overall. • Project Adopt is the business adoption of cloud services including interoperability, it learns from previous programmes and industry best practices, to aid the adoption of best practice cloud services within government. • OneGov cloud contains a lessons learned toolkit which is easily accessible. • The Shared Services Strategy team facilitates numerous working groups which act as communities of best practice intended to support clusters with implementation of the Strategy. Additionally, Overseas have committed to share their lessons learnt in the next 4 months. Throughout Strategy development and implementation there has been a seeking out and sharing of insights from other GMPP projects, industry and other states/governments on similar journeys. The Shared Services Strategy team through IPA will offer briefings to other GMPP programmes as necessary.