The debate was held as findings emerged of comprehensive new research into shared services due to be published later this month by Informed Publications in partnership with Capita and the Society of IT Management (Socitm).
According to the survey, almost all public sector managers (94%) agree that shared services present an opportunity to cut costs, and just 5.1% feel sharing holds no potential benefit for their organisation.
However the research also predicts a typical 3-6 year timeframe for return on investment. Geoff Connell, chair of the Society of IT Management (Socitm) London branch and joint CIO of Newham and Havering councils, said: "If you look at reducing head counts, particularly with large amounts of redundancy costs, it takes time to manage people out of your organisation.
"Also contracts take time to move away from and join up with your partners, because they may be for a number of years. These are some of the reasons it takes a while to get set up. Even just aligning technology platforms. If you've got 5,000 users, it doesn't happen overnight."
Ian Gates, divisional director of Capita, said there is sometimes a tendency for councils to display "a level of optimism" when business cases are put together for shared services, but there are big returns to be made over several years nevertheless. "The question is what's better, do you wait another year to see how you can make [savings] even quicker or do you actually start, learn from the experience and then build over the next five years?" Paul Taylor, director of change and communities and Tunbridge Wells borough council, said councils sharing services should work up from back office functions such as human resources to more strategic functions like ICT. At each a business case must be made and managers tasked to deliver it.
However it is unclear whether shared services could deliver all the savings needed for councils to survive the deep and sustained budget cuts they currently face, Taylor said. "Will it be enough at the end of the day? I don't think any of us can tell. One of the challenges we have got is things are changing so rapidly, and what local government will look like in three to five years' time is anybody's guess.
"So our partnerships need to be flexible, they need to be agile, technological solutions need equally to be flexible and agile, and we need to plan for the longer term."