Departments and ALBs are migrating to shared services from different starting points. While some departments are on ageing legacy systems, three departments—the Department for Education, HM Treasury and the Home Office—have already invested in modern, cloud-based platforms that also provide back-office operations like finance and HR.48 Although the Matrix cluster has made plans to onboard the Department for Education and HM Treasury to shared services in August 2027, these departments have indicated that they would now welcome more information from Matrix about the likely costs to them before making a final commitment to join.49 The lack of these two departments’ formal commitment affects Matrix’s ability to plan and impacts its benefits calculation.50