Public sector IT chiefs back shared services push

Public sector IT chiefs are backing the government's move to shared services but warn that it won't necessarily happen as fast as some in Whitehall would like.

The move towards shared services across public sector organisations, such as local and central government, emergency services and the NHS, was a consistent theme at a prominent public sector conference that kicked off in London this morning.

Speaking as part of his keynote address at the Government UK IT Summit, Department for Work and Pensions IS strategy director Keith Palmer said: "We are moving to shared services, to realise efficiencies, by standardising and simplifying. We will need strong, strong leadership... it's a cultural change."

Much of the debate at the event, organised by European Technology Forum, which shares a parent company with silicon.com, was about making government services run better and at a lower cost. Advocates of shared services say the approach certainly reduces costs as it does away with needless repetition, nowhere less so than in IT.

However, there were warnings that shared services is not necessarily new or shared in its meaning. Nor that it will happen at the pace government IT departments would like to move at.

Hampshire County Council head of IT, Jos Creese, said: "We need to capture the level of joined-up-ness we had 20 years ago."

Yvonne Gallagher, CIO at the DTI, added: "It is critical we have a shared vision now about how important it is to be joined up."

She also pointed out the many agencies that an organisation such as the DTI has to deal with and how they can be much harder to 'join up'.

Meanwhile Sir Chris Clarke, implementation manager at the Improvement and Development Agency, warned: "For councils, I would say learn to co-operate, collaborate and share - or quite a few of you will be got rid of. Look at what's happening in health and the police."