Share your ICT specialists with other councils and save money

Do you have specialist ICT staff whose key skills are needed only for part of the time? Say, an Oracle DBA who spends as much time doing miscellaneous support as the job they're really paid to do?

Might you be interested in recovering some of the salary costs by making that person available for work in other councils? If so, we'd like to hear from you. We've had a strong response to recent mailshots introducing our People as a Service initiative, mainly from councils that would like to use ICT specialists with local government credentials but cannot afford an FTE.

The way People as a Service works is that if, say, you have an ICT specialist whose special skills you use for only 50% of the time, we would seek to place them for the remainder with a nearby council (or councils) with a need for that resource and we would pay you for their salary during the time they are seconded. You save money while maintaining service quality, the specialist gets wider experience and spends less time doing uncongenial work, and councils which could not afford suitable specialists can now do so.

People as a Service is a shared services initiative which could really help councils to maintain or even improve service quality while saving money. If you feel there may be scope for your authority to get involved, either by sharing one or more of your people with other authorities, or by timesharing specialists from other authorities, or both, please reply to this email or call me on 0845 450 0904. I look forward to hearing from you.