Discuss Media Issue

The chosen media issue is about the Rann Government’s Shared Services plan that was meant to save the Government millions of dollars but has now been blown out by $37 million. The blowout costs have been revealed in previously unpublished evidence to the Budget and Finance Committee. This media issue has featured in several newspapers, online news websites and also broadcasted on news radio stations.

The shared services initiative is to streamline and simplify internal corporate and business support services to deliver savings that can be redirected to community-facing services. There will be a common set of support services, rather than duplicating these functions across Government Agencies. This will assist in standardising corporate functions across the agencies and achieving performance improvement. There is also a high focus on customer service through provision of performance measure and reporting.

This approach is currently being used in other states of Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In Australia, the Governments of Queensland, Western Australia, Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory have all introduced shared services models to their administration of a range of business support services.

As part of the 2006-2007 State Budget the Treasurer announced the Shared Services reform initiative would deliver an estimated savings of $130 million over four years, with an estimated savings of $25M in 2007/08, $45M 2008/09 and $60M from 2009/10 onwards. Sharing common infrastructure services makes economic sense. The auditor-general however had pre-warned the Government that their savings targets depended entirely on the shared services program actually working. State Under-Treasurer says the shared services process has clearly turned out to be harder to achieve and more complicated than originally thought.

The shared service project means that corporate and business functions across all... [continues]

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