Government Shared Services

a) The Cabinet Office and clusters should first consider the feasibility of delivery, including any contingency plans should funding not be forthcoming. They should then take account of the following recommendations.

j) The Cabinet Office should create a pool of expert staff which can be used by clusters to provide additional capability or capacity.

k) Departments working together as clusters should each complete a ?lessons identified? assessment to demonstrate how they have taken on board lessons from previous strategies and share these with the Cabinet Office.

e) Departments should establish cluster-level governance arrangements to avoid duplication in decision-making and to embed the cluster model. It should no longer use existing departmental governance routes to approve high-level strategy decisions.

b) The Cabinet Office should put in place performance metrics that allow it to understand and measure how implementation of the strategy is proceeding, and progress in achieving data and process convergence

c) The Cabinet Office should streamline its central governance arrangements so that they avoid duplication and unnecessary work for departments.

d) The Cabinet Office should ensure that future strategies that propose similar transformational change are supported by a full business case. It should revisit and update the ?case for change? to make this a more comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of the strategy, working with departments to ensure benefits are calculated consistently

h) The Cabinet Office should revisit its decision to control cluster procurements via the Digital Procurement Framework and consider contracts of a longer duration, or with the option to extend as standard.

f) Departments working together as clusters should complete individual ?declarations? that set out agreed ways of working and reaffirm their commitment to the Shared Services Strategy. This should be signed by each departmental accounting officer.

g) Departments working together as clusters should ensure that their cost and benefit figures are calculated in a consistent way to allow for comparison across clusters and to make it easier to monitor the outcomes of the Shared Services Strategy.

i) The Cabinet Office should stagger when clusters go out to market so that clusters do not all begin procurement at the same time. This should help to ensure capacity and capability across the programme. It should take into account contract end dates for ageing systems when deciding on this ordering