Section 7: Shared Services Model “Governments spend a considerable amount on support services, such as recruiting, hiring, training, information technology, data entry and processing, vehicle maintenance, facility management and maintenance, custodial services, travel services, security, accounting and telecommunications. Many governments have turned some of their internal service operations into competitive enterprises, which must sell services to their customers to get revenue. Iowa, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Phoenix, the Edmonton school district in Canada, the U.S. federal government, Australia and the United Kingdom have all used this approach in significant ways.� – Redesigning Ohio: Transforming Government into a 21st Century Institution, Ohio Chamber of Commerce, 2010. During development of Beyond Boundaries, A Shared Services Action Plan for Ohio Schools and Government the term shared services model is used to describe the components that support successful collaboration programs or determining optimum service levels for collaboration. In developing the Shared Services Model, two fundamental questions were asked: At what level or scale should a service be provided? The teams evaluated shared services models at local, county, regional and state levels. The second question was to define which entity(ies) should lead in providing the shared service. Additional considerations included assessing whether an existing collaborative effort is scalable or replicable to or by other government entities; legal mandates for a specific entity to provide a shared service; geographic constraints that limit economies of scale; and whether or not a program has been evaluated for effectiveness. The deliverables team used centers of excellence and leading providers to identify and define the common elements in successful shared services collaborations already in existence to define a shared services model which can be used as a template for the development of shared services agreements.
RECOMMENDATION (10) The Shared Services Model should be used by state and local leaders to determine opportunities for shared services and the optimum manner for individual entities to join together for the provision of a specific shared service.
24