Technology for shared services.(News & Numbers)(global survey)(Brief article)

In August 2006, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) queried 127 public sector executives on the opportunities and challenges entailed by using shared services in government. The scope of response was global, with Western Europe leading the way in the number of responses (42 percent), followed by the Asia-Pacific region (24 percent), North America (16 percent), the Middle East and Africa (8 percent), eastern Europe (5 percent) and Latin America (5 percent). Organizations came from a spread of sizes and organizational levels, with 52 percent reporting annual budgets/expenditures of $500 million or less.

The results showed 70 percent of responding public sector agencies are using or intend to use a shared services model to enhance citizen service and increase efficiency The research highlights that building a technology infrastructure is essential for shared services success. Nearly half of respondents (48 percent) believe that a single portal interface is very important to improving the quality of shared services, since such a portal would enable access to all applications and services. Respondents also expressed significant interest in the ability to share data (40 percent) and applications (30 percent) across organizations via a single software platform.

The report also found that a shared services model would make its deepest impact on business process improvement (cited by 75 percent of respondents). Almost 82 percent cited cost reduction across multiple departments as the most compelling reason to use shared services, while 42 percent perceived shared services as a way to improve citizen/customer satisfaction.

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