4 The impact of shared services in
HM Prison Service
19. HM Prison Service has created a Shared Services
Centre for all 128 Prison establishments at a single site in Newport.
This is another of the more established public sector shared services.
Finance and procurement services began operations in April 2006,
and have been fully operational since July 2007. A service supporting
the human resources function was introduced towards the end of
2006 and will be fully deployed in the second quarter of 2008.
20. HM Prison Service expected the implementation
of a Shared Services Centre to be challenging, and so made risk
management integral to the business plan.[47]
Nevertheless, a major technology failure in its purchase-to-pay
system in the last quarter of 2006 meant that HM Prison Service
had to enact its disaster recovery procedures and return to manual
invoice processing.[48]
These temporary measures affected levels of service, and help
to explain low levels of customer satisfaction.[49]
HM Prison Service believes the purchase-to-pay system is now working
well,[50] and complaints
are down to one for every 3,000 transactions. The proportion of
transactions that can be processed without special intervention
has reached 77%,[51]
against a target of above 80%. The Service considers its Shared
Services Centre should eventually be able to reach 95%.[52]
21. HM Prison Service is in the process of agreeing
a Memorandum of Understanding with the Home Office to provide
the latter with corporate services.[53]
HM Prison Service is confident it can provide a good service and
use the additional volumes of work to lower the average unit cost
for each transaction.[54]
It intends to apply the incremental approach used for its own
human resources services rather than what it regards as a more
risky "big bang" approach.[55]
22. HM Prison Service cannot prove that introducing
shared services has allowed it to cut staff numbers because it
does not maintain records of the job changes of individual employees.[56]
The Director General of the Prison Service told us that the cost
of extracting the information from the systems operated before
shared services were introduced would be excessive, although such
information would be readily available in the future.[57]
Instead it sees reductions to prison operational budgets as evidence
of savings. HM Prison Service warned governors and budget holders
of these reductions, giving them the opportunity to make temporary
appointments to fill vacancies in posts that would disappear,
and to move permanent staff from those posts to other work. HM
Prison Service saw these measures as reducing the risk of having
to fund large redundancy costs.[58]
While this broad overview of budget changes can provide evidence
of savings, it is not proof that savings have come as a result
of shared services rather than through other efficiencies.
23. Shared services inevitably involve the aggregation
of personal data such as staff records and bank details. HM Prison
Service assured us that its shared services follow best practice
for data security, that as an organisation it is experienced in
handling highly sensitive data, and that its most sensitive data
were not affected by the adoption of shared services.[59]
47 Q 62 Back
48
Q 17 Back
49
C&AG's Report, Figure 10 Back
50
Q 63 Back
51
Qq 63, 102 Back
52
Q 63 Back
53
C&AG's Report, para 2.18 Back
54
Q 65 Back
55
Qq 63, 65 Back
56
Q 61, 97 Back
57
Qq 98-101 Back
58
Q 60 Back
59
Qq 66-68 Back
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