Q1. What are shared services?
Q2. Why is the government pursuing a shared services approach for corporate administrative
functions?
Q3. What is the scope of shared services?
Q4. Have other organizations adopted Shared Services?
Q5. How is this initiative related to Service Canada?
Q6. How is this initiative related to the Expenditure Review
Reductions?
Q7. Will this result in job losses?
Q8. How valid are the criticisms that this initiative will end up with one software vendor and one suite of
products?
Q9. What are the next steps?
Q1. What are shared services?
Shared services are defined as the consolidation of common corporate administrative systems and functions among
departments and agencies to improve efficiency,
effectiveness and lower costs of service delivery.
Q2. Why is the government pursuing a shared services approach for corporate administrative functions?
The federal government is pursuing a shared services approach in order to:
- Improve internal management because good management is the foundation to delivering quality services to Canadians
- improve decision-making and accountability through consistent and high quality information across the government;
- improve the quality of internal services for managers and employees, to better support them in achieving their core program and policy goals; and
- achieve efficiencies that can be re-allocated to other government priorities.
Q3. What is the scope of shared services?
The initial areas of focus for shared services within the federal government are transactional human resources, financial, and materiel services and IT services.
Our research, as well as the experience of other jurisdictions and the private sector, show these areas are most suitable to shared services and provide the most
significant benefits.
Q4. Have other organizations adopted Shared Services?
Shared services have been adopted successfully by a number of jurisdictions, as well as within the private sector. A report released in February 2005 (by Accenture)
gives an excellent overview of global experience in public sector shared services.
(Source: Driving High Performance in Government: Maximizing the Value of Public-Sector Shared Services - http://www.cnw.ca/en/releases/archive/February2005/14/c3734.html)
Within Canada: BC, Alberta and Ontario have adopted shared services
Internationally: a number of US states (e.g., Massachusetts), State of Queensland in Australia, Ireland, New York City have adopted shared services.
Q5. How is this initiative related to Service Canada?
Service Canada is focussed on delivery of government services to citizens.
Shared services is focussed on the internal-to-government administrative services supporting all GoC program delivery - namely HR, finance, materiel services and IT
services (e.g. data centres services and desktop services…email, office suites and help desk services)
Q6. How is this initiative related to the Expenditure Review Reductions?
A portion of the Expenditure Review reductions announced in February 2005 are coming from administrative or corporate efficiencies. These are in the areas of finance,
materiel, IT services, and in some cases, human resource services.
The Shared Service initiative will facilitate the achievement of these reductions while also ensuring that there are:
- improvements in enterprise-wide information and reporting in support of transparency and decision-making and,
- improvements in the quality of internal service delivery to managers and employees.
Q7. Will this result in job losses?
Shared services will involve changing how we perform administrative and IT functions. As we have done with corporate and information technology systems in the past, the
implementation would be phased in over a number of years, thus giving the Government time to manage workforce retraining needs.
Lay-offs are not expected. However, staff reductions can be anticipated and would likely be accomplished through attrition.
Q8. How valid are the criticisms that this initiative will end up with one software vendor and one suite of products?
In the mid-1990's, the federal government rationalized its Financial and HR systems from well over 100 to the 7 financial systems and 14 HR systems currently in
use.
We will further reduce the number of different systems in use, but at this point, we cannot speculate on how much further. Our focus will be on streamlining and
standardizing processes and improving the quality and value of the services.
Q9. What are the next steps?
Work is ongoing to further refine the scope of the shared services initiative. Proposals will be subject to further discussions internally and with the private
sector.
Work on this initiative is also undertaken with due regard to our obligations to protect the privacy of Canadians.
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