Drive for shared services and 'back office' staffing reducations stepped up‏

Key to government promises to "protect the frontline" (http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21634) from the impact of spending cuts are"efficiency" plans for "back office" operations across central government, local government, schools, the health service, police services, and all other public sector bodies. Cabinet Office papers released this week to accompany the Pre-Budget Report provide more detail, building on the Operational Efficiency Programme launched by the Treasury earlier this year:

"The private sector has often been ahead of the public sector on drivingdown back office costs. Shared service centres, now the norm in the privatesector, are one example of how higher-quality support can often be providedat lower cost. The current public sector structure, with most departments,agencies and non departmental public bodies running their own back office functions, inflates costs unnecessarily. For back office support to be provided at the lowest possible cost, collaboration should be the norm, either between public sector bodies or with the private sector...

"We will publish wider public sector benchmarking data from Budget 2010 showing the cost of hr, finance and other back office functions. Also byBudget 2010 we will require back office consolidation plans from all AlBs[arms length bodies] to set out plans to reduce back office costs andstrengthen the drive towards shared services...

"We have agreed stretching new comparators informed by private sector median performance to support improvement in public sector back offices. these include improving the ratio of hr staff to non-hr staff to 1:77, reducing the cost of finance functions to 1% of organisational spend and reducingoccupancy to 10 square metres per full-time member of staff...

"We will look to expand the most successful shared services centres with aview to potentially creating the first public-sector shared-service company. A specialist company of this kind could then offer services across thepublic sector, providing a platform for public organisations to transformtheir back offices more easily to reach private-sector benchmarking levels..." >http://www.hmg.gov.uk/media/52788/smarter-government-final.pdf