People as a Service - cutting costs and reducing risk
The pressure on ICT services to deliver more for less is unrelenting, and people with specialist skills are a major cost element. If you could share specialist personnel with other local authorities you could make substantial savings without sacrificing quality of service.
In this context, it's no surprise that our 'People as a Service' proposal attracted so much attention at the recent Socitm conference. Even larger councils sometimes struggle to justify retaining full-time specialists, and smaller councils much more so. 'People as a Service' would enable you to share the costs of your most expensive people with other authorities, or to procure, say, a security manager working to an agreed service level agreement for just four days a month. That one resource might be shared across perhaps half a dozen different organisations, all of them saving money but enjoying continuity and guaranteed quality of service.
The key point about this is we would be taking on the risk and organising the efficient sharing of skilled professionals; you would save on headcount without compromising service delivery and without having to organise complex vetting, sharing and billing arrangements. It was this last point which aroused so much interest at the Socitm conference, because some authorities and regional groups have already started exploring similar ideas but have run up against the challenge of who's got time to organise it all.
We're keen to initiate a dialogue about the proposed service and explore the ideas and resources that could be brought to bear. If you would like to contribute to the debate or if you feel there may be scope for your authority to make savings in this way, either by sharing one or more of your people with other authorities, or by timesharing specialists from other authorities, please reply to this email or call me on 0845 450 0904. I would be pleased to discuss your requirements and how they might be met via a sharing arrangement with other authorities we're already talking to.