PM's office signs up for shared services

Downing St is to use Flex for Desktop IT

The news that 10 Downing Street has agreed to sign up to the Public Sector Flex desktop IT shared services scheme will no doubt please programme supplier Fujitsu.

Two years into the contract, with five more to run, Fujitsu has struggled to get the uptake expected for Flex. Only the Cabinet Office, Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service and the Office of National Statistics have signed up ­ none of which is among the biggest Whitehall IT users.

Flex offers the option of sharing desktop hardware, software and services between departments, an increasingly attractive proposition at a time when the public sector is under pressure to tighten its belt. The addition of the prime minister’s office could persuade other bodies to follow suit.

However, potential users may be discouraged by a recent Procurement Capability Review published by Whitehall buying agency the Office of Government Commerce, which takes aim at the Cabinet Office implementation of shared services, and singles out Public Sector Flex for criticism.

The Fujitsu deal is a framework agreement, meaning that contractual terms agreed with the Cabinet Office, such as prices for goods and services, will apply to all public sector bodies that sign up.

But a lack of “flow down clauses”, which would bind subcontractors to the same conditions as Fujitsu, is causing headaches.

“The lack of effective flow down clauses in the structure of the Flex framework contract increases the contract management burdens for individual departments and could inhibit advantages being gained by one department being shared across all the departments that are signed up to the Flex model,” says the report.

And other problems with Flex, revolving around delays in bringing key stakeholders on board, have damaged its reputation.

“Wider stakeholder communities have been engaged late in some projects (often for security reasons) and this has damaged stakeholder confidence in commercial capabilities. For example, the central security group’s review of the Flex architecture and the resulting delays to the project,” the report adds.

Confidence in public sector shared services has already been shaken. A National Audit Office report last year into a shared IT services scheme for agencies within the Department for Transport said the initiative could end up costing £81m by March 2015 instead of the £57m saving that was intended.

But there have been success stories: Transport for London made savings in 2005/06 through the introduction of shared service centres in finance and HR, and wants to introduce a single shared function for IT across the Greater London Authority.

Uptake is key to the success of shared services, and the Cabinet Office must do all it can to emphasise the positive elements of Flex if it is to be a success, said Ovum public sector analyst John O’Brien.

“If you’re looking at cost savings, the more departments you get on board the better. This needs to be sold at a local government level if it is to achieve mass take-up,” he said.

“And Flex can give the option of thin-client desktop systems as well as shared server power, helping agencies reduce their carbon footprint.”