Public Service Transformation and Reform

The performance gap between private and public service provision is widening. Yet this is happening at a time when there is cross-party recognition of the need for reform of public services and when investment is casting a spotlight on public sector productivity rates.

The obstacles hampering efforts to transform public sector delivery are no longer ideological. They range from systemic issues, risk aversion, change management capability, lack of understanding of what is possible and inflexible procurement processes. Yet the appetite for involvement in public service delivery amongst the provider community remains strong. In addition, the market in many areas has matured and expanded significantly, and there is a willingness to work with government in new and innovative ways.

This paper argues that alternative service delivery models (ASDMs, a mix of public private and third sector provision) are inevitable as a prerequisite for transformation; only the quantity and pace of change is unknown. We examine ways of accelerating that process so that the significant benefits expected can be delivered more quickly.

 

Introduction

The idea of Public Service transformation is not new. Since the introduction of the Welfare State in the late 1940s successive governments have looked at how to balance public need and available funds.

 

What is different is the pace of change. Changes in society, public expectations and attitudes, use of technology (particularly the web), types of industry, working practices and the private /third sector capabilities have accelerated in the past 10-15 years. The public sector has struggled to keep up and the performance or productivity gap between public and private sector has widened. But there is now a clear determination to deliver meaningful transformation, as political parties seek to differentiate themselves on efficient and effective provision of public services.

 

A number of obstacles lie in the path of reform. For example, infrastructure, processes and technology do not provide a suitable platform for any government. Other barriers include: fear of failure (due to the public scrutiny and accountability of civil servants and ministers); resistance to change, either because of familiarity with established processes or sectional interest; political and social constraints; the drive for excessive fairness when policies are being developed which leads to over complicated rules and processes which are unintelligible to the general population; or a fundamental lack of understanding of what really could be achieved through properly harnessing the capabilities of the private and third sectors to the public sector.

 

Despite some improvements, our current Government finds itself increasing investment without necessarily producing the step changes needed. There is a political consensus on improving public services, increasing fairness (equality of opportunity, needs vs. ability to pay), devolving responsibility to the individual and capitalising on private and third sector capabilities. Indeed, there has been a shift in ideology, with the result that the whole concept of 'fairness' has become synonymous with 'competition' and choice. Yet there is no apparatus or know-how to achieve those outcomes.

 

Real transformation requires reform of the delivery mechanisms involved in public services. Reform comprising a combination of private, third and government sectors is inevitable. Such plurality of provision should introduce contestability, helping to drive innovation and close the public/private productivity gap. However, such an approach will require shared objectives under creative commercial arrangements (what we have called Alternative Service Delivery Models or ASDMs). Successful implementations such as National Savings and Investments and the congestion charge in London point the way. The questions are when, or how much and how fast, not if and the answers depend on the balance between the drivers for change and the lack of current capability.

 

On the plus side are factors that augur well for reform: growing demand from users; increasing dissatisfaction of wider stakeholders; recognition of the systemic nature of some current problems; and the growing maturity and flexibility of the provider community. However, concerted and co-ordinated effort is required to capitalise on those drivers, remove the barriers and accelerate delivery of the expected benefits.

The drivers for change.

1. 'Customer' demand

A drive towards devolved responsibility and customer-centricity fuelled in large part by a population whose expectations and demands of Government have risen in line with private sector improvements and who are no longer tolerant of poor standards. The Varney Review Service Transformation: a Better Service For Citizens and Businesses, a Better Deal for Taxpayers and strategy paper Transformational Government - Enabled by Technology both identified the need for 'customer' (either business or citizen) centricity.

 

2. Wider stakeholder expectations

Increasing criticism from media, Treasury, parliamentary and departmental reviews as current initiatives are seen as not working or are over-sold. For example, some departments are relying almost exclusively on LEAN techniques to deliver all their desired changes - efficiency, service quality improvement and greater customer-centricity. Criticism is coupled with a clear desire for radical reforms across all Government Departments and a need for prioritising public spending, putting transformation at a premium. That desire for the radical is linked to a shift in ideology. There is now a widespread belief that competition is synonymous with fairness. As a result, rather than 'fairness' being the exclusive domain of the public sector, plurality of provision, driving contestability and innovation, are seen as the route to closing the productivity gap between public and private service provision. Lastly, there is a growing realisation that, structurally, information mechanisms within the public sector appear to be less sensitive than the private or third sectors and therefore struggle to harness the market as a selection mechanism.

 

3. Underlying systemic failures

Recognition that change is not possible within an infrastructure that cannot support or facilitate it, where the investment in modernising legacy infrastructure outstrips government ability to fund it and where big bang IT investment at best delivers only discrete new capabilities. It is also widely understood that fragmented operations between and within departments have a detrimental effect on service quality such that citizens need to deal with a multitude of government touchpoints to accomplish even basic tasks. For example the Varney Review recognised that the consequences of bereavement can require 41 separate notifications to government agencies.

 

4. A maturing market

A maturing and expanding third-party provider market with the ability to transfer know-how, share risk and rewards, provide examples of proven concepts and cover more 'niche' service provision. This is coupled with a genuine willingness on the part of the major providers to explore creative commercial constructs with Government. In addition, there is a recognition at senior levels within government that the private (and third) sector has a crucial role to play in effecting transformation and developing / maintaining the pre-requisite systems and processes.

 

5. Untapped benefits

Untapped benefits which derive from the ability to change the underlying business model to deliver better services at lower cost. Direct benefits include: vast reductions in cost; avoidance of capital expenditure; sustainable service improvements; guaranteed service levels; variable pricing; influx of talent; sharing of know-how; more flexible service provision able to respond more quickly to change - either in terms of new services, or additions/amendments to existing services.

 

 

True transformation remains elusive.

Despite the many drivers for change there are barriers to be overcome. These range from resistance to change; inflexible, procurement processes and regulations; lack of know-how and experience; concern about public services not being provided directly; and the private sector preferring to react to demand rather than spend time offering creative solutions when there seems to be no appetite for them. At their heart is a lack of understanding of what really could be achieved if the Public sector could properly harness the capabilities of the private and third sectors.

As a result, creative delivery models are rare in the public sector because the roadmap for getting there is not understood. That roadmap comprises - formulate strategy, engage the potential internal and external service suppliers, compare, negotiate, finalise, transition and manage. In addition, the models themselves are feared by many of those who should promote and create them because they are seen as adding risk when there is so much to do, rather than mitigating the risk. The argument is often that 'now is not a good time'. Such an approach means that 'now' will never be a good time - whenever now is.

 

The process itself isn't complicated but there is a lot to do and you need a clear outcome (or picture of the new service delivery model and underlying processes), sufficient resources, robust methods and a flexible procurement process. Government procurement processes lack this flexibility and are geared toward selecting the lowest cost 'offer'. This precludes creativity and innovation as competing suppliers pare their services to the bone in order to stay in the hunt. That might be appropriate for product procurement, but complex services require a more sophisticated approach and selection criteria. There is also a lack of upfront acknowledgement that things will go wrong and little attention paid to how all parties will work together to put things right. Procurements should be decided much more by the track record of organisations to sort problems when things go wrong, rather than those who tender the lowest price. The 'blame' culture which prevails is not healthy and merely serves to make suppliers defensive or to factor risk cost into their tender responses.

Despite some notable exceptions, the end result is often poorly constructed, adversarial arrangements where neither party is satisfied with the outcome, relationships that are strained at best, the service levels are unsatisfactory and there is often early termination. Most highly visible use of external providers to provide complex service solutions are therefore examples that have failed. This 'fear-of-failure' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - that the provision of public services and support functions (rather than simply their procurement) must be the exclusive domain of civil servants. This colours approaches to existing services, and to new ones. The latter should be encouraged to start with the opposite presumption; that is, the service should be delivered by the private or third sectors rather than the public sector (in line with the Public Sector Reform Model published in 2006).

 

It is widely accepted that there is massive demand is for high calibre individuals to drive complex Change Programmes,  and that there are not enough of these people to go round.  In any market where there is a shortage of resources the logical answer would be to distribute the scarce resources which are available in the most effective way. Public sector reform would be massively assisted by 'seeding' individuals with these skills into their major programmes and recognising that they are provide exceptional value (despite their high cost).

Government departments need to learn how to become better clients, and how to get the maximum out of their chosen providers. In the public sector, commercial performance-management and governance typically means applying service metrics and penalties. Relationship building and incentives to over-perform and provide innovation are rarely considered - yet these are the areas which offer the most potential for a step-change in service performance.

Accelerating Transformation through Alternative Service Delivery Models (ASDM)

ASDMs in this context reach beyond traditional outsourcing, off-shoring, joint ventures or even shared-service solutions (see Annex A for further details on some of the issues raised by these approaches). The supplier/provider market has matured and expanded substantially over recent years. Providers recognise the need to innovate and adapt services to meet the specific needs of their customers. Large-scale, off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all solutions are no longer the order of the day. While some contracts remain large, there is a growing trend towards smaller-scale tailored solutions, with the customer and supplier working in partnership to deliver a set of shared outcomes. Notable successes can be found in local government, but these have not as yet become commonplace in central government. For example: front office services in Westminster City Council (provided by Vertex).

 

The challenge is to exploit and capitalise on the drivers for change, by addressing the barriers identified above. We believe a number of steps can be taken to accelerate the process - their timing, start-point and sequence will depend on the particular circumstances involved. In summary, these are (see Annex B for more details):

 



Build Acceptance- a key early step is to gain widespread acceptance that monopolistic service provision is not the only option; there are other better, (cheaper and more effective) delivery approaches available. As a result current initiatives are unlikely to deliver the required transformation on their own. This will require education (see below) on what ASDMs can deliver, in particular how they can de-risk current approaches.

Education - acceptance and then transformation will not happen without a better understanding of ASDMs - what is possible, the potential benefits and where support can be found. This can best be done in dialogue with the provider community (see also below).

Identify suitable candidate processes for ASDM's -trying to identify possible candidate functions for transformation can be daunting when faced with the scale and the multiple objectives that characterise many public sector organisations. One approach that has been piloted successfully, is to filter the main processes by applying a series of coarse filters and asking key questions at each stage (for example - is the process specialised or generic?). More details of this approach are provided in Annex B.

Create Heroes - these are the sponsors who will champion the processes through, turning the concept into delivered reality. 'Heroes' are likely to be responsible for strong-candidate processes as well as embracing the concept of ASDMs.

Engage the Provider community (both private and third sector) -in the past ten years this market has matured and changed almost beyond recognition. Harnessing the power of the private and third sectors is a crucial step on the transformation journey and will require working with the internal commercial department to set up informal Provider 'advisory groups' to explore innovative technical solutions and commercial constructs (non-traditional, faster, less-formal, more creative and politically sellable). This, we believe, is the step that will be the biggest challenge and require the highest level of support.

Conclusion

The gap between private and public sector service provision will continue to accelerate unless more radical approaches to transformation are adopted within government. We believe that radical changes to procurement processes and attitudes coupled with alternative service delivery arrangements - integrating public, private and third sectors in innovative ways - are the key to that transformation. There are clear steps that can be taken now that will speed up the process of change - particularly to educate the public sector and engage the provider community. The benefits are significant (fewer disaster projects, massive cost reduction, avoidance of capital spend, better quality provision, more flexible/responsive services); the time for action is now.

Annex A - Issues facing traditional external service delivery models

Theoretically these traditional approaches have the potential to provide real value. Indeed some such solutions have been highly successful; for example National Savings and Investments. However, each traditional approach carries its own set of problems and issues. For example:



Outsourcing: the attractions and benefits of Outsourcing need to be off-set against negative connotations such as the loss of jobs and potential transfer of work offshore leading to social and political resistance as well as being the least welcome option for the civil servant to buy-in to. Outsourcing transactions themselves are fraught with pitfalls and the public sector doesn't have the know-how to avoid the pitfalls and manage the risks. Typically it will try and rely on draconian, rigid contract terms and conditions that stifle creativity, co-operation and innovation.

Shared Services: shared services (between or within departments) are beginning to emerge as transformation agents but require huge augmentation from outside which is expensive and rarely, if ever, do the requisite skills and know-how transfer to the public sector staff and this jeopardises the sustainability of the model. Shared services have struggled to materialise because Departments do not like giving up control and there is no incentive for Departments to share because Government does not yet reward its senior people by reference to the way they work together & there is nothing similar to a share price to show the result of the overall endeavour.

Joint Ventures: joint ventures (or enterprise partnerships) are even less well understood than outsourcing or shared-services. Theoretically, an enterprise partnership will overcome many of the traditional weaknesses and pitfalls by providing an influx of talent, a close working relationship and responsibility which is designed into the concept and real incentives for both parties to perform. The reality is that the providers who prefer this commercial approach are working with the financial service and other industries where buying services has become far more sophisticated in the past decade and [with the exception of PFi initiatives] this option is largely (and in our opinion wrongly) eschewed in the Public sector. Joint Ventures have proved difficult because Government has worried about a perceived conflict of interest if the senior Civil Servants involved in the Joint Venture focus on its success rather than the Department's.  In our view it should be possible to design things in such a way that the two are mutually compatible.

Other variations on the above themes, such as smart-sourcing, right-sourcing, right-shoring etc are insufficiently understood with little knowledge of the upside or how to create and manage them, insufficient resources to pursue and social / political factors.

Annex B - Detailed steps to accelerate transformation through ASDMs

Build Acceptance

A key step on the road to transformation is widespread acceptance that there is a problem. There are innumerable initiatives currently underway involving armies of consultants and various change methodologies but few, if any, will result in radical or sustainable improvements to public services. This is partly because the external resources are not augmenting the departmental staff, partly that the results aren't guaranteed and partly due to the lack of skills and know-how transfer during the process. Acknowledgement of the need for a more radical approach is hampered by the belief that the programmes underway are radical enough, are already stretching the resources and are presenting risk.

Education

Delivering transformation by definition means changing established and familiar delivery models. Many of the difficulties lie in 'soft' barriers because it means changing the perspectives that people are attached to and gives them their sense of identity. Transformation will not happen without a better understanding to dispel myths, broadcast benefits, reduce fear and anxiety and help people become aware of the support available. Seminars allow people to meet to share their challenges and help key sponsors identify 'transformation heroes' and generate a feeling of change inevitability. That's necessary to convince decision makers that proposals are soundly based. Finally education instrumental in helping foster 'Acceptance'. Training programmes can be run in-house or by the private sector; either way you need to involve both for maximum effect. The courses should include work-shops involving private sector solutions-architects and senior executives to broaden the debate away from the traditional models and demonstrate the willingness, capability and passion that these organisations have in this area. Workshops ensure that stakeholders feel part of the solution. They should involve the directors of the centres within government that are meeting both parties' objectives (for example Westminster City Council / Vertex or the congestion charge in London). Aside from the levelling of knowledge, part of the objective would be to create a lasting excitement around ASDM's to replace the suspicion and fear that currently exists.

 

Identify suitable candidate processes for ASDM's

Government departments can, and should, integrate where it makes sense or needs, to but government is too big to treat as a single entity; and this is where things often fail. A single Department could have tens of thousands of civil servants and hundreds of bespoke processes. Trying to identify possible candidate functions for transformation (leverage, shared-services, centres of excellence or any variety of external sourcing) can be daunting when faced with this scale and the multiple objectives that characterise public sector organisations. One approach that has been piloted successfully, is to filter the main processes (e.g. forms processing, form design, call centre and even internal expense claims) by applying a series of coarse filters (process characteristics, internal capability and organisational factors) and asking key questions at each stage:

i. Can the process be shared or leveraged?

ii. Is it specialised or generic?

iii. How does the internal capability compare with external providers'?

iv. Is there a mature, proven market for the process or function?

v. Do our customers or employers demand that the process (service) is carried out by state officials?

vi. What level of comfort would the key stakeholders feel with the various delivery options for this process?

 

This process categorises the various processes into the delivery option pools that might be suitable and makes explicit any assumptions and possible sensitivities (political and social). Processes can be examined in an environment of continuous improvement, recognising the need to understand the end to end process to avoid lock in by handing off one task in isolation. It also prepares each directorate in terms of readiness for further transformation, anticipating the time when current initiatives run out of steam or further spending reviews demand more radical solutions.

 

Create Heroes

Another key step is to identify the sponsors who will champion the processes through, and help prove the concept. 'Heroes' are likely to be responsible for strong-candidate processes as well as embracing the concept of ASDMs. Without sponsorship at this level, transformation will remain a concept. There are already some notable successes. Xansa at the DoH has proved that an attractive offering can create competition and attract support.

 

Engage the Private Sector

The capacity, capabilities, and willingness of the major service providers to participate in the reform of public services are vastly underestimated. In the past ten years this market has matured and changed almost beyond recognition. There are now sophisticated commercial arrangements in all industry sectors [e.g. IBM, GenPact Accenture] The Public sector has been the slowest to embrace these new commercial models. Often it keeps these organisations at arm's-length and engages with them reluctantly through inflexible procurement structures designed for a different era (the NHS NPfIT programme is a classic example of what not to do in this regard). Harnessing the power of the private sector is a crucial step on the transformation journey. This requires working with the internal commercial department to set up informal Provider 'advisory groups' to explore innovative technical solutions and commercial constructs (non-traditional, faster, less-formal, more creative and politically sellable). This, we believe, is the step that will be the biggest challenge and require the highest level of support.

For any questions in relation to this paper, please contact:

Mr Nick Andrews
EightyTwenty Insight Ltd
New Broad Street House
New Broad Street
London EC2M 1NH

Tel: +44 (0)845 680 0201
Mobile: +44 (0)779 932 2312
Email: info@8020i.co.uk
Web: http://www.8020i.co.uk

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SSON Roundtable Debate - UK Public Sector Shared Services - Where Now and Where Next?

Sharing services has risen up the agendas of the UK's national and local governments in recent years, propelled by political and financial trends as well as by more concrete factors such as Sir Peter Gershon's 2004-5 Efficiency Review and Sir David Varney's report on transformational government. In an attempt to throw some light on recent developments and to examine where shared services may be headed in future, SSON convened a roundtable debate involving a group of practitioners and advisors at local and national level, chaired by SSON's online editor Jamie Liddell. The results were, indeed, illuminating...

Attending were:

Tony Isaacs

Programme Manager

Warwickshire Direct Partnership

The Warwickshire Direct Partnership is a shared services programme comprising all six local authorities in the county of Warwickshire: North Warwickshire Borough Council; Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council; Rugby Borough Council; Stratford District Council; Warwick District Council; Warwickshire County Council; and three private-sector partners in Steria, MacFarlane Telesystems and Northgate Information Systems.

Dominic Swift

Head of Shared Services

Browne Jacobson

Browne Jacobson is one of the largest law firms in the Midlands with offices in Nottingham, Birmingham and London. The firm acts for over 100 local authorities, either directly or through their insurers. It recently published its Shared Services Survey '08, one of the most comprehensive surveys ever carried out into shared services in the UK.

Peter Telford

Chief Executive Officer

Research Councils UK Shared Services Centre

Research Councils UK (RCUK) is a strategic partnership between the seven UK Research Councils. RCUK was established in 2002 to enable the Councils to work together more effectively to enhance the overall impact and effectiveness of their research, training and innovation activities, contributing to the delivery of the Government's objectives for science and innovation.

Ray Tomkinson

Local Government Improvement Specialist and Shared Services Author

Ray Tomkinson is the author of Shared Services in Local Government: Improving Service Delivery (Gower, 2007). Ray managed the Welland Partnership shared services project and currently operates as a consultant.

SSON: Peter, you're at the head of one of the more prominent national shared services centres [SSCs]. Can you explain a little about the drivers behind the move in your organisation?

Peter Telford: Behind the Research Council's business case are benefits focusing on what are seen as financial gains which will be passed back to research and the research community, but probably more importantly in the early stages is the feeling that we can secure better effectiveness in business support to that research community by aggregating the seven Research Councils' services onto one common platform, and transforming them. The business case started with an outline about two years ago. There was a lot of work done on certain parts of the shared service model even before that, but the activity's really come together in the last two years. The full business case was accepted by the Research Councils in line with CSR07 [Comprehensive Spending Review 2007] in August last year, and the intention at the moment is that we will go live on the platform at the beginning of next year. We already have some services live in the IT and strategic sourcing areas.

SSON: Tony, your project's been going for rather longer than that. Would you say that the drivers behind the Warwickshire Direct Partnership are similar?

Tony Isaacs: I think ours were slightly different in that when we started off in 2002/3 the driver behind that was, basically, to capitalise on the money that was available from central government at the time. We made a bid as the Warwickshire Online Partnership, and set up that particular group specifically to bid for that money: a total of £2m. We identified a number of different projects that we would attempt to procure and implement with that money, not least of which was the joint procurement by all six authorities in Warwickshire of a CRM [citizen-relationship management] system and associated telephony systems. We got the full £2m and since then we have actually implemented it; we jointly went to procurement and we've ended up with the Northgate front office CRM system.

Now I don't think the goalposts have changed, but the drivers have. I think the drivers have changed in that there is no money available now; it's exactly the opposite insofar as before there was money splashing about, if you will, from central government, and now it's the opposite insofar as with CSR07, with all the efficiencies and demands that there are on local authorities to save, there is an overriding need to make things more effective and more efficient, and shared services is seen as being one key method of doing that - with the consequence that we are in a position now where our chief executives, our leaders, are very keen in looking at what can be done. And based upon that - or around all this - is the whole area of the two-tier structure within Warwickshire, and the drive that the government may want to push - and seems to be pushing - with regards to unitaries. But Warwickshire is very clear that it wants to retain its two-tier organisational structure and will do so by sharing services.

Dominic Swift: Tony, I just want to follow something through on that, because it's a theme that emerged when we did our research on shared services [Browne Jacobson's Shared Services Survey '08] that certainly efficiency savings and improvements in the way services are delivered are key drivers, but what you've identified as a lack of money was one of the real inhibitors, because in order to deliver shared services there is a considerable cost: You've already mentioned telephony which was obviously put in as part of the grant, and one of the problems that people seemed to face was the immediate increase in costs to deliver a shared services stream before any efficiency savings could actually be delivered.

Tony Isaacs: You're absolutely right insofar as there's a need to spend in order to deliver efficiencies, and what we're seeking to do is to build up good, strong, powerful business cases that maybe looking over a five-year spread, so that while there is a recognition that to begin with you may need to spend money, over the period following that it's anticipated that there will be savings. And Warwickshire may be different, but we don't necessarily regard it just as pounds saved: it could be efficiencies. So it's non-financial benefits as well as financial ones.

SSON: Ray, do you see many differences between the drivers for local and national shared services?

Ray Tomkinson: Yes I think there's one big difference, which is the issue of government compulsion, as it were. There's no doubt about it: central government departments recognise that they really don't have much alternative at the moment to creating some element of shared services - because the Treasury makes sure that they do, because the Treasury controls the purse strings. It's less clear that in local government every council is going to have to go down the shared services road.

As was being made abundantly clear a minute or two ago, local authorities have different ways of approaching their financial restrictions or their political considerations, one of which is the unitary agenda - or the two-tier agenda in other councils. So some councils are going to have to go down the shared services route because it's the only way organisationally that they're going to function. Other councils don't have that imperative at the moment and I'm working with one group of four councils which are looking at sharing services but not because of financial pressures. They're looking at it because they want to make service improvements, to improve resilience of services, and also give opportunities to create new services. So it's a very different agenda between the two.

SSON: Peter, from a national perspective are you seeing an increased pressure from government to implement?

Peter Telford: Yes. Historically I've been in shared services in the private sector, local authority and now central government so I suppose I can absolutely empathise with the previous comments. I think the compulsion from central government is largely fiscal although there is a feeling that the transformational agenda that sits behind it is also very prominent. I think the other difference in central government is it is easier to identify and reach a critical mass where you can actually effect a transformation and deliver efficiency and effectiveness. At the local government level, it is more difficult to create critical mass - which then makes the funding routes and the benefits probably more difficult to determine in the early stages.

SSON: OK. There's been a lot of talk about what advantages other than cost savings can be delivered through shared services. And this brings us on to the issue of benchmarking. When it comes to savings you can obviously benchmark against what you're saving and how much you've saved against previous budgets, for example. But when it comes to service-delivery, how can one establish exactly what you're benchmarking, and against what and against whom? Is there a common thread here in terms of where you go for benchmarking?

Dominic Swift: I think benchmarking's so different, for different projects, is the long and the short of it. What we've seen through our research is that there's a very wide range of different projects - we've already talked about the drivers, and it really depends on what you want out of your project. One of the frustrations that we heard at the national launches that we did of our review, was that there wasn't enough benchmarking of the actual outcomes. And a lot of people said to me "how do we judge whether this has been a success?"

One of the problems is that if you produce a much more efficient service, which is more attractive to the general public (if it is a front-facing service, which more and more are) is that it will actually be used more. And as a result you're getting better value, in terms of hits, but the cost of the service may actually go up. So it is quite a complicated job to benchmark and I think it requires some very clear outputs to be identified at the outset, and to look for comparable projects.

SSON: Tony, you've got a wide variety of services you need to benchmark...

Tony Isaacs: Yes, that's right. I can concentrate really around the CRM system, because all the information we've got is via customer services, and improvements we've made to that around the CRM system. What we've done is take benchmarking as a very serious exercise in its own right, and what we've sought to do is to get customer insight by using different databases, information from the CRM, information from MacFarlane - the telephony system - and pool all that information among all the partners. And what we've done then is to say "ok, concentrate on the areas that we want to concentrate on" and to make sure that we do improve the services that we are seeking to improve. We have got what we call an Improvement Forum, which is a relatively recent creation and which is proving to be very successful as well. And that's looking at the way in which the CRM in particular can add value to the whole process of improving customer services.

We are concentrating as well on a variety of different access channels, so we've got the CRM system, we've got telephone contact obviously, face-to-face via our one-stop-shops - we've got eight of them at the moment, with another eight planned for next year. We've got kiosks as well. But also I think most significantly, in the next few months or so what we're looking to do is drive ourselves forward with web self-serve, and look to try to move people more towards that means of accessing services. And I think that will be a double win because the customer will benefit greatly from that in terms of speed of service, but also we will, because we'll drive down the unit costs, and that quite clearly is a key method of making savings.

SSON: In the private sector a great deal of benchmarking goes on between individual companies and organisations, and as a result you have the idea of world-class et cetera. Is it a pipedream to suggest you might be able to get similar systems set up in the public sector, in which every region and every locality has its own pressures?

Peter Telford: I don't think it is and I think the benefit of the public sector is, by and large we're not competing with each other, and therefore people are much more willing to share information and the assumptions that sit under that information to try to help each other along. And I'm quite heartened by that kind of culture. I think the difficulty with the private sector is that it's usually wrapped in commercial connotations and costings as well, which makes it very difficult to unpick to ensure you are comparing like with like. Albeit that said, the difference is that there is much more evidence when you can find it and it's much more prescriptive in terms of service levels than I would suggest you would find in the public sector.

Dominic Swift: I'm very interested to see whether there can be some sort of worldwide benching or benchmarking which really does define the success of projects. I'd be very interested in understanding more of what Tony's doing and how the measurement takes place, capture of information and then the dissemination of that, to actually judge how that service is being delivered and where the successes are - and where perhaps the challenges are. And also what sort of services you're comparing that with. Because as I see it, shared services range across such a vast array of the different public sector areas - we were talking earlier on about this being local authorities but clearly it goes to health and other public sector bodies as well - and from that point of view the real problem you'll have it seems to me is comparing apples with apples.

Tony Isaacs: I can give you a fairly high-level description of what we're doing, and that is that we're using some software you may be familiar with - Mosaic Data - and we've populated a lot of databases according to the information that we've gleaned from there, and that's proving to be very much the benchmarking process that we're going to go through. And there are certain authorities out of the partnership that are leading on this.

For each of the projects that we have, we have lead authorities who volunteer to lead on particular projects. We've got Nuneaton for example to lead on one, as well as the county, and the county has information that it uses from its observatory, and there's a pooling of information, and there's an agreement via the Improvement Forum for example whereby they do concentrate on specific areas with the data they've accumulated - whether it's county-wide or just individual authority-wide. But basically they work together as best they can to provide these benchmarking criteria. It's not a quick process by any means. But over time we build up that data and then we can use it from year to year to do comparisons to see how things are improving.

In addition to that I don't know if you're familiar with NI14, the latest government key indicator which has just come out, which is to do with avoidable contact with clients - customers - with local authorities. And we'll be using the CRM to glean quite a lot of information via the CRM system. But it is a corporate-wide key indicator, so you will have other services, other departments, feeding in this information as well. That information is supposed to be started in October of this year and it will be used year-on-year to gauge how we're doing, in terms of avoiding avoidable contact, and looking to improve that.

Peter Telford: I think it's fair to say whilst we have not yet built the longevity of data that Tony describes - and I absolutely agree with him that building a profile and a trajectory is invaluable as a benchmark - we haven't really got to the point yet where we are able to benchmark our service delivery over a period of time; what we are doing is assessing our performance as we transfer services. We've got a baseline against some services from the Research Councils and from my own experience and from talking with others in the public sector we will then aggregate what we believe will be appropriate targets for the Research Councils against their baseline. But I'm with Dominic: initially it is very difficult to compare apples with apples and ensure you've got a representative benchmark.

Dominic Swift: Peter, it's very interesting from my point of view. I quite agree with you about the "apples with apples" thing. I think what's been said about the public sector is very true: it's much more transparent, there's much more desire to learn from each other. One of the things I'm doing tomorrow actually is go down to sit in in Kettering where they've been running a shared services project for many years - well, well before Gershon and Varney and the rest. And that's very interesting because people are open about what's happening in shared services and happy to learn from each other. The difficulty seems to be that they range over such a wide area, the danger is that unless people come to some common terminology about what outputs are going to be defined for particular services it may be possible to benchmark over time as Tony's doing, but actually benchmarking across different projects will be very difficult.

Ray Tomkinson: I think that's very valid. One of the issues is that there is no commonality across authorities as to what constitutes a service. So what you tend to find is that people dive for a process - and even when they dive for a process it doesn't tell you an awful lot about the service that you're trying to share. And there's often a real difficulty in stopping trying to find the trees when you're trying to fight your way through the forest. So from that point of view I think benchmarking has on occasion got a very bad name because people use it as an excuse for not doing anything; and it's only in the past couple of years where I think people have been much more prepared to be open about the fact they need to consider sharing as an option and sometimes benchmarking isn't used as a blockage.

SSON: Let's move on from benchmarking. We were talking a little about the private sector a minute ago - are we of the opinion that the private sector is an absolute necessity within UK public sector shared services, and to what extent is it a foregone conclusion that this is going to result in a degree of privatisation of services?

Dominic Swift: This is a question we asked in our survey: the sort of view that we had was that of course the private sector is an important potential partner in shared services, but there were just as many opportunities for the public sector to work together without the private sector. So, yes, it's part of the picture but it certainly isn't necessarily the whole of it. And I don't think that privatisation is an inevitability from shared services: where we saw the private sector coming in, and the survey really highlighted this, links back to the funding issues we discussed earlier on.

Where you needed some sort of IT facility and commonality across a number of authorities and participants, quite often the private sector partner was someone who could deliver that in order to relieve some of the initial cost difficulties of setting up a shared service which frankly couldn't be borne by some of the participating authorities.

SSON: Tony, that's certainly what you were saying about the initial start-up of Warwickshire, isn't it?

Tony Isaacs: Yes certainly: and it's ongoing because we've just finished the renewal of the CRM contract and the telephony contract, so from the beginning of next year we will actually be embarking on new five-year contracts replacing the existing ones. And that's the position of the CRM, the telephony, the ICT systems around it - so yes, it's inevitable that we have to go down that route. We've had good - very good - negotiations with the private sector on this and I'd like to think that all of us have come to a very good, fair new contract.

Ray Tomkinson: I think actually the point that was made about investment is a very good one. There is actually no reason why local authorities can't do sharing on their own without the private sector, and there are lots of examples around now where groups of councils are trying to do public-public partnerships. But I do agree: where there is a real need for investment - particularly around IT - then that's where the problems start for local authorities, and that's why they often do resort to the private sector.

But I do think that it's worthwhile pointing out that as much as there are needs for investment, particularly in IT, there are lots of services which do not need that investment, and I'm thinking of professional services like planning, or building controls are another good example, or environmental health is another good example, where simply you're dealing with people. One of the problems though that local authorities do find in that area is the scarcity of professional planners, environmental health officers, building control officers. And often they have to partner with the private sector simply for that reason.

Peter Telford: We need to get back to the point that I think Dominic made earlier which is in analysing what you're trying to achieve with your SSC you then start to look at how you're going to do it. And how you're going to do it may or may not include the private sector. If you do seek investment from the private sector, they will seek a return on that investment; you just have to recognise that. They may indeed want a profit which may erode the efficiency savings you seek to make.

I think another thing that the private sector brings is experience and expertise in the sorts of change and benchmarking data which you may need. That said, I think the blend of public and private sector in trying to get to a shared service centre is the right one and the transfer of risk to the private sector through doing this is always pretty key in terms of what you want to get out against your project.

Tony Isaacs: I was just going to pick up on the point that if you can go for joint procurement as opposed to individual authority procurement, you can really reap the benefits, and the bottom line will be that you do make considerable savings - not so much a profit will result, but it will produce efficiencies in savings. We found that with our negotiations latterly with Northgate and MacFarlane, and also more significantly during the course of the contract that we've just had, when we as a partnership stuck together and wanted to get individual things out of Northgate, and/or MacFarlane, by standing firm we could really apply the screws to them, and they were forthcoming; so we could really achieve quite significant savings on different aspects of procurement that we did during the course of the four years we've had the system.

In terms of profit, I'm not sure whether profit's the right word as I just mentioned; what we're looking for are savings and efficiencies and I choose to use those terms rather than profit. In essence we can justify what we're doing now: adding value, making sure we are getting the market rate or better, and we can quite happily and justifiably tell our chief officers and members based on the business cases that we've produced that we are getting best value, we are making savings and efficiencies on the basis of this joint procurement exercise.

SSON: Moving on: the future form and structure of shared services in the UK is, it appears, going to be determined in large part by competition between authorities, in a lot of areas. How do you see local shared services existing in the UK in, say, two or three governments' time?

Ray Tomkinson: Two or three governments' time, that's interesting. So that'll be two Conservative and one Labour... I suppose my thinking goes like this: I think that in 15 to 20 years' time you will see a patchwork quilt across - certainly the local government sector; I'm not quite so sure about the central government sector. And what I mean by that is you will have a group of statutory authorities that are all geographically based - whether that's a county or a district - there will be differences across the country.

Secondly they will have different types of shared services in different areas. There will be some that will be public-public; some that will be public-private; and some that will be public-public in terms of different sectors: health will have joined in; the police will have joined in. Because the pressures of the CAA regime coming from the Audit Commission mean that all public sector organisations in geographical areas have got to think whether it's better to work together than to work separately. And as a result of that I think you'll get a really different appreciation across, and in some areas there will be very heavy private involvement and in other areas probably none.

Dominic Swift: Basically I think it'll depend a little bit on the nature of the shared service, to be honest. Sorry - I keep coming back to that point really. It struck us during the course of the work we did that there are two different forms of shared service: the ones which perhaps have been more prevalent to date, which have been the sort of back-office, IT function - ICT-reliant functions - and then the front-office function. Now they have very different possibilities in terms of partners. If you look at the front office it is a locally-delivered service and therefore your partners are chosen by geography, and geography alone: they can't be chosen by much else, other than if you go to some sort of call-centre arrangement. But the other services can actually be amalgamated a lot more and with less sensitivity to geography.

So I think there are going to be some quite different groupings and possibly some legal authorities who particularly drive the delivery of a good service who perhaps sell to a very wide range of local authorities: health, via police, all of these are potential customers for them. And then on the local basis it's going to be a lot more down to politics and the dynamics between the politicians as to how well their shared services are going to be run, and I think some of the political difficulties we have in Nottinghamshire, where I'm based, may make it quite challenging to get some of those local shared services off the ground.

SSON: Tony, I know this is something you've been thinking about, and obviously as quite a successful service provider it must be on the agenda. So let's put you on the spot: do you think you will be at the forefront of a successful selling of services in the next couple of years?

Tony Isaacs: Yes I think I do in the next couple of years, but if you're talking longer-term than that I think - and I hasten to add that this is my own personal view - the likelihood is that there will be an increase in unitaries. And there could well be in Warwickshire as well. I can put forward a very rosy picture in some ways - but at the same time you've got nagging at the back of your mind all the time the difficulty that there is in actually creating successful shared services - and I think that's from a political point of view as well as the straightforward business-case point of view.

I think there will be more and more unitary authorities, to be honest. And I wouldn't be surprised if even Warwickshire eventually ended up with two unitary authorities rather than the six authorities we've got now. I think it's almost inevitable, and I think the government will continue to apply the screws, demand more and more savings year upon year, and the consequences will be that it'll almost be inevitable that there will be more.

Peter Telford: I think this is too early in our development path to consider and I think building a stable service with reference-ability is key before we could go there. The wider central government agenda is pretty clear in terms of convergence of effort and activity onto some of the core shared services in the bigger departments. That's already starting to come because of the requirements laid down by the Cabinet Office. And you can see the agenda already moving to: how do you ensure that there's a commonality of solution and agreement on service levels that are given to customers? How do you allocate customer benefit across a broader-based shared service? How do you prioritise how you would offer services to customers? Those are debates which I think are becoming more prevalent and therefore indicative of activities and departments coming together on shared service platforms.

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Accuser of Strauss-Kahn Goes Public

The woman who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, of sexual assault in a Manhattan hotel room has granted her first interviews to Newsweek and ABC News, which will begin broadcasting segments of the interview Monday morning on its “Good Morning America” program.

The woman, Nafissatou Diallo, a hotel maid whose accusations were thrown into question by discoveries made about her by the New York District Attorney’s office, tells Robin Roberts, an anchor for “GMA,” that she wants justice. “I want him to go to jail,” an ABC News release reported her saying in the interview. “I want him to know there is some place you cannot use your money, you cannot use your power when you do something like this.”

ABC reported that there were no restrictions on the interview, which the network plans to use portions of on all its major programs, starting with “GMA” Monday morning and continuing on “World News,” its evening newscast, and “Nightline,” its late-night news program.

With the publication of their reports, Newsweek and ABC News became the first mainstream American news organizations to publish the accuser’s name, because the woman publicly came forward.

View the original article here

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The 10 Best Public High Schools In America

Once again charter and magnet schools in Texas hold the reigns as the top public high schools in the country.

Newsweek released its ranking of the best public high schools in America, using a panel of experts and reaching out to more than 10,000 high schools in the country.

Newsweek asked schools to submit four-year graduation rate, percentage of 2010 graduated who immediately enrolled in college, various test scores, student to teacher ratio, and stats about advanced placement courses.

Other southern states and western states also claimed some of the best public schools in the nation.

#10 North Hills Preparatory—Irving, Texas

College bound: 92%

Student/teacher ratio: 11.3

Avg. SAT score: 1716

#9 Suncoast Community—Riviera Beach, Fla.

College bound: 100%

Student/teacher ratio: 25

Avg. SAT score: 1737

Suncoast High School also won the 2010 Magnet School of Excellence Award.

#8 University—Irvine, Calif.

College bound: 96%

Student/teacher ratio: 34.5

Avg. SAT score: 1920

Famous actor Will Ferrell is an alumnus of University High School.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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