NSW government opt for the safer shared services route
In an attempt to avoid the problems that can come with a ‘big bang’ style shared service implementation, NSW State Government have taken a more cautious approach in comparison to local government in Western Australia and Queens land.
Large scale shared services can promise massive savings, but due to the complexity of bigger projects, these can sometimes prove hard to attain. Since 2002, Western Australia has been attempting to build its shared services function, which projected a $50 Million a year savings on its $315 million back office budget.
However, the implementation is currently 2 years behind schedule, and $70 million over budget. Questions are starting to be asked, especially as the taxpayer is now footing the $400,000 per month-projected cost while the anticipated savings were deferred from July 2007 to July 2009.
A similar situation occurred in Queensland, with state government ending up outsourcing the shared service implementation to IBM.
As a result, NSW government has chosen quieter initiatives that are created from existing, smaller shared service functions, in a bid to avoid such problems.
