SOCITM South

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SOCITM South

• Plotting a course to good collaboration
• in early 2007

Ben Rowland Director RSe Consulting 26 January
2007
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Plotting a course for collaboration in 2007
What Im going to cover

• The challenge
• The White Paper
• The Varney Review
• LGR
• Lyons
• Shared Services
• What does this all mean?

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RSe in a nutshell / flower

• Strategic and management consulting for local
  government
• 150 clients 75 of clients have already used us
  again
• Clear vision of public service excellence
• Chairman is Sir Michael Bichard
• Significant track record in shared services

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The challenge

• Whats the best course to adopt for
  collaboration?
• Significant drivers
• Huge opportunities
• Multiplicity of policy steers competing to be 1
• But almost no steer on how to turn policy into
  systems and processes, and then into real services

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Strong and Prosperous Communities - The Local
Government White Paper
Background

• Strong and Prosperous Communities - The Local
  Government White Paper was published on 26
  October 2006
• A follow up Implementation plan was published
  in January 2007 5 workstreams have been created
  
• The White Paper signals the next stage of public
  sector reform it aims to enable effective local
  services and to create better places, through
  new relationships and better governance

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Strong and Prosperous Communities - The Local
Government White Paper
What does it say?

• Informing, involving, consulting with and
  devolving to citizens
• more control
• user friendly information

• The role of councillors and voluntary
  restructuring
• 4 year terms
• Unitary councils

Economic development of cities

• Local Area Agreements and Local Strategic
  Partnerships
• Sustainable Community Strategy to set out the
  strategic vision for an area
• Local Area Agreement framework to deliver the
  vision

Reducing the number of targets to 200 and the
Comprehensive Area Assessment ? from up to 1200
down to 200. ? Local Area Agreements - 35
priorities for local areas ? the CPA will change
to the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA)
CSR 07 efficiency target and how efficiencies can
be achieved ? efficiencies at least equal to CSR
04 will need to be delivered for CSR 07 ?
partnership working ? BPI, technology, channel
migration, smarter procurement and asset
management
Local authority role in building unified
communities ? promote community cohesion and
prevent extremism
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Strong and Prosperous Communities - The Local
Government White Paper
Implications for Local Government
? Few significant changes four year terms and
fewer targets are the major tangible
developments. ? Many unknowns Lyons, CSR 07 and
more detail in key areas (e.g. targets, LAAs) is
needed to complete the picture. ? Many
dependencies the success of these policies
relies heavily on citizens and partners,
including central government behaving in the
right way. ? Lots of ideas huge amounts of
thinking around the way that local authorities
interact with citizens and public bodies. For
the ICT professional flows of information
between your authority and others are critical
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The Varney Review
Background

• Service transformation a better service for
  citizens and businesses, a better deal for the
  taxpayer, was published by the Treasury in
  December 2006.
• The review was carried out by Sir David Varney at
  the request of the Chancellor
• The review focuses on how the channels through
  which services are delivered can be made more
  efficient and responsive to the needs of citizens
  and businesses

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The Varney Review
What does it say?

• New systems and services
• A single, shared identity management system
• A single change of circumstance service
• Possible introduction of a single access number
  for non-emergency public services
• Improvement and rationalisation of access
  channels
• The number of public sector websites to be
  radically reduced
• Contact centres to be much more efficient and to
  offer much better service (including shared
  services, accreditation and 25 efficiency
  savings)
• Greater co-location of offices

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The Varney Review
Implications for Local Government

• Financial
• Tough savings targets based around
  customer-facing services
• Further pilots of new ways and working to be
  funded during 2007-2011
• Organisational
• Contact centres under pressure to merge
• Role of DWP
• Citizen focus
• Customer/citizen insight will be pushed
• Systems
• Single identity management system
• Encourages further development of Government
  Connect
• For the ICT professional identity management,
  financial value insight, need to work out what
  your access channels are for

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Local Government Reorganisation

• Unitarisation building relationships,
  reorganisation plus savings
• Enhanced two tier working building
  relationships, reorganisation plus savings

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Lyons Review

• ?

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Shared Services
Background

• Driven by the Shared Services team in the
  Cabinet Office
• March 2006 - Transformational Government
  strategy
• July 2004 - Gershon report
• Shared services are beneficial as they can
  deliver
• Efficiency reduce waste and inefficiency by
  re-using assets and sharing investments with
  others
• Better services Sharing back-office services can
  improve services delivered to other service areas
  in the Council and those delivered to the public

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Shared Services
In our experience

• Service quality improvements LAs have the right
  resources in place to deliver improvements
• Forecast cashable gains are often not realised
  due to
• a) a lack of robust business cases
• b) a reluctance to restructure staffing and
  reduce headcount
• Size of partnership is important - smaller
  partnerships (fewer than 4 partners) are
  relatively quick to realise gains but larger
  partnerships have potential for greater cashable
  savings
• Authorities can realise cashable savings if they
  write a decent business case that clearly
  outlines expected costs and benefits, choose the
  right partner, use BPI appropriately and hold a
  team or individual accountable to performance
  manage the contracts and relationships

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Plotting a course to good collaboration in 2007

• Be proactive need to look out for opportunities
• Spend time with each other
• There is no one-size-fits-all model
• Shared services are not free to set-up or
  maintain
• Accountability and control are vital
• Requires buy-in from your employees
• The problem of infrastructure

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Plotting a course to good collaboration in 2007

• What youll need to plot your course
• Focus
• Determination
• Discipline

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Contact details

• Ben Rowland
• ben.rowland_at_rseconsulting.co.uk
• 020 7233 0608
• Original Local Government White Paper available
  from the DCLG at
• www.communities.gov.uk
• Strong and Prosperous Communities - The Local
  Government White Paper
• Original Varney review available from the
  Treasury at
• www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
• Service transformation A better service for
  citizens and businesses, a better deal for the
  taxpayer
• Summaries of both available from
  www.rseconsulting.co.uk