02 December 2005
Permanent secretary John Elvidge has urged public sector agencies in Scotland to start sharing support services to achieve real savings.
Speaking in Edinburgh on November 25, he told leaders of public sector agencies that the current position in Scotland, where most public sector organisations provide their own support services, was no longer sustainable.
The challenges facing the sector could be met more successfully 'if we tackle them together rather than in isolation', he added.
Elvidge was speaking at the launch of Scots Connect, a new venture between the Scottish Executive and private sector to promote shared information and communications technology services across public agencies.
Working with its partners, the Executive had developed systems that were robust, reliable and ideally suited to the needs of the public sector, he said.
He stressed that sharing support services could also be applied to other functions, including procurement, human resources and finance. It was a simple idea that could make a big impact, offering a real opportunity to make significant savings and overhaul the way the public sector was run.
Elvidge said there was a real prize to be won. Examples in other parts of the UK and overseas, in both the public and private sector, where shared services had been employed, had demonstrated that savings of up to 30% could be achieved and services improved at the same time.
He added that the current situation was 'wasteful and expensive and no longer sustainable'.
The Executive is producing a public sector-wide strategy for shared support services which it will be consulting on early next year.
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