Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of progress on their Shared Services Strategy, and in particular whether this has delivered cost savings for the taxpayer; and what plans, if any, they have to provide an update on the current and future work of Government Shared Services.

Launched in March 2021, the Shared Services Strategy for Government aims to modernise the back office of government, enabling significant efficiency gains in critical business services such as HR, finance and commercial.

There are now nineteen departments working together in five clusters that will form the shared service centres. Cluster shared service centres are all expected to be live in the next eighteen months. All departments will join a shared service centre by 2028 as current contracts expire to ensure value for money.

Two of the five clusters are up and running, Overseas has realised over £120m in benefits so far and is now looking to expand and go further around automation to realise further efficiencies. The Minister of Defence is looking to move beyond the current civilian HR system to incorporate the military. The remaining three clusters all have initial approval and funding to go to the market. They are finalising procurements for technology and services and will bring business cases for approval in the coming months.

Clusters estimate that all departments using shared services centres will reduce annual running costs by 20 per cent. Overall they currently estimate that the Strategy will realise more than £3bn of benefits over fifteen years. Direct cost savings are only one element of these benefits. Faster, automated and standardised systems will enable significant timesavings for Civil Servants and general efficiency gains across departments. The clustering model will also make future procurement cheaper and give more buying power than departments have on their own.

During the next six months we expect clusters to submit business cases for approval, continue procurement and ultimately sign contracts.