Collaborating for Successful Delivery

Civil Service World, the magazine for the senior civil service, would like to invite you to a round table discussion which poses the following question: How can departments collaborate and deliver services for each other to drive down costs and offer a better customer experience?

For some time now, government departments and public sector organisations have sought to move away from traditional outsourcing models towards an environment where services are shared – an emphasis which complements the Cabinet Office’s ‘Government as a Platform’ drive. While there remains a role for the private sector in these new ways of working, in this model improved public services to the end-user are achieved by departments leading the sharing of capacity and expertise.

The barriers currently preventing this from happening more often include a lack of awareness that the expertise and capacity exists elsewhere, and a lack of trust in the other department to deliver a better service. Yet there are strong examples where one government organisation has taken on another’s business processes to successfully deliver efficiencies and better customer services. When, for example, the Ministry of Justice asked National Savings and Investments (NS&I) to oversee the account management processes of the Court Funds Office – which were paper-based and not fit for digital services – NS&I modernised the payment system, reduced costs and increased customer service and satisfaction. Elsewhere, the Defence Vetting Agency provides National Security Vetting on a platform called Cerberus to other government departments. This ties into the wider Defence Business Services shared services model.

Organised with the support of NS&I, this round table will bring together civil servants and their peers in the wider public sector to address the key issues around improving government’s operations and customer experience through departmental collaboration.

Topics will include:

  • What are the potential benefits of one department delivering for another?
  • In which situations has this arrangement proved most valuable, and where has its potential been hardest to realise?
  • What have the critical factors been for these arrangements to work successfully?
  • Where are the key risks in developing and adopting this model, and what lessons have been learned from organisations’ difficulties in doing so?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages over a traditional private sector outsourcing, procurement led approach to delivery?
  • How can government bodies decide the balance between in and outsourcing, and what capabilities should they retain?

This is an invite only event. If you are interested in attending please contact Daisy Crisp at events@dods.co.uk.

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Date & time
09/06/2015
11:30 - 11:30
Location
gb