Shared services: Learning the lessons from Queensland and WA

Talk of shared services abounds in the government IT sector, but failures in Queensland and Western Australia have highlighted the dangers of IT migration across departments

First Assistant Secretary of the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), John Sheridan.

First Assistant Secretary of the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), John Sheridan.

Diving headfirst

AGIMO’s first assistant secretary of agency services, John Sheridan, is careful not to point fingers or comment on the failures of other shared services projects.

“These are, make no mistake, complex projects that require a great deal of work and support in governance terms, in business terms and in IT terms,” he says.

However, Sheridan is keenly aware of the potential pitfalls of shared service arrangements and the measures required to ensure the success of migrating resources and contracts between IT departments within government agencies.

As first assistant secretary, Sheridan is effectively second-in-command to Australian Government CIO, Ann Steward, and oversees much of the shared services work underway at the agency and across government.

Among those tasks, AGIMO, and the wider Department of Finance and Deregulation, has since 2008 been tasked with finding $1 billion in ICT savings as outlined by Sir Peter Gershon in his report to government, a task Sheridan argues was achieved in October 2009.

The report as a whole has become a bible for the federal and state governments; a source of inspiration Sheridan and his counterparts have drawn from to deliver successful ICT activities. And the bible’s decree on shared services is this: Tread lightly.

“[Peter Gershon] wasn’t recommending against shared services; he was commenting on the need to look at these things carefully,” Sheridan says. “Any major IT project is going to have risks to it, and these need to be properly considered and time allowed and resources allowed and the schedule to progress those things.”

A review into the progress of agencies enacting recommendations in the Gershon report, authored by government consultant Dr Ian Reinecke and released last year, issues a similar warning: Beware pitfalls.

The first of these, and perhaps most important AGIMO’s Sheridan argues, is a common law of ICT: Business must dictate technology, not the other way around.

“It’s not like you have to be a brain surgeon to work this out,” he says. “The challenge comes when you try to change business processes with an IT solution.”

The internal processes are the first step in determining how to improve the business, and ultimately, allow for innovation.

It’s a point Fujitsu’s UK head of public sector desktop services, James Mayo, agrees with. Any software, shared or otherwise, that attempts to mould the business process will ultimately fail. The Queensland Health debacle is a case in point.

“When do you bite the bullet on the multitude of terms and conditions in place across departments?” Mayo says. “As soon as you say, ‘We need a payroll that will accommodate the existing terms and conditions’, then automatically you’re not releasing the standardisation of shared services elements.”

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