Keywords: shared services, finance shared services, New South Wales government, ZDNet Australia, Australian Financial Review, BusinessLink, ServiceFirst

New South Wales government to examine its shared services

Matthew Garrow-Fisher | News | 18 April 2012

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The government of New South Wales is to re-examine its shared services network to find greater value from it.

Forming part of the government's Information and Communications Technology strategy, seen by The Australian Financial Review, finance minister Greg Pearce will consider the future of its shared services organisations BusinessLink and ServiceFirst.

"What we've done is essentially stopped a lot of the shared services work that was going on," he told the news provider.

"We're looking very hard at BusinessLink and ServiceFirst and whether we should be in that business at all or how to get value if we stay."

Mr Pearce added that the previous government used a number of shared services, but suggested they were "overdesigned" and did not always deliver services any better or more cheaply.

The minister also confirmed to ZDNet Australia that the government commenced investigations into the two companies earlier this year in order to "assess whether they are providing quality services, and to look at ways to maximise their value".

Shared services were first introduced by the previous government in 2010 to make its IT provision more efficient by consolidating departmental IT operations. It had planned to manage eight of 13 super agencies with services from one provider.

Meanwhile, agencies including health and education that had more complicated practices would be serviced separately, ZDNet Australia reported.

The government said at the time that the shared services blueprint would "provide sector-wide consistency and standardisation within the areas of corporate and shared services, while acknowledging the uniqueness and complexity of individual departments and the services they provide".

But it has since then come up against the challenges of shared services and it will now be up to the current government to assess the future of the programme.

New South Wales is not the only government to face barriers to shared services adoption. Western Australia was forced to cancel its programme last year and Queensland has also cut-back operations within some departments.