‘Shared Services: where now? A guide to Public Sector Implementation’
A new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), published by CIPFA (2008).

In the introduction, Alan Edwards, Chair of CIPFA’s IT Panel writes:

“…we feel there is a strong business case for sharing services for both back and front office”

Mr Edwards does not say what the business case is. John Seddon imagines it amounts to no more than the assumptions that such designs will lead to ‘economies of scale’ and, as part of that, lower transaction costs. These are plausible but unsound ideas.

Sharing services is a central theme in the regime’s flawed ideology, it is something that is not easily undone; mistakes create costs over the long term. We already have more examples of folly than improvement; hence this paper is a necessary riposte to the PWC report.

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