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Atos Origin stated at a recent roundtable that the savings due to be made through the Operational Effectiveness Programme (OEP) will, without doubt, be insufficient to cover the Public Sector shortfall. It estimates that at least as much is required again.

Commenting on how efficient public services can be delivered, Mike Zealley, who is leading on the OEP for Atos Origin, said: “Greater collaboration with suppliers and a more joined-up, cross-departmental approach are needed. We are seeing evidence of this type of approach delivering incremental benefits in excess of 15% beyond the types of recommendations in the OEP". He also commented: "More of the same will lead to a failure to deliver on these targets. The time has come to challenge the conventional silo thinking."  

Philip Chalmers, Atos Origin Strategy Director, said: “If the response [of departments] is to send out a letter to suppliers that says: ‘Thank you very much but we’d like you to take a 15% cut in your service charges,’ we won’t get anywhere. Collaboration from the outset will be essential."

The roundtable, held in conjunction with Civil Service World and attended by leading politicians and civil servants, fostered a lively debate focused on the ‘back office functions and IT’ and 'collaborative procurement' work streams. Attendees discussed how the OEP affects civil servants’ work and how still greater efficiency savings can be made.

Areas where greater savings could be delivered were identified:

-        Procurement– need more flexible, long term contracts that can easily be adapted as organisations’ needs evolve and that support a more collaborative approach to sharing and managing risk between the Government and suppliers. Engagement of suppliers early in efficiency discussions is critical in order that they can help achieve the objectives.

-        Cultural Change – for long-lasting reform and efficiency, improved commercial skills are required right across Government, not simply in the commercial functions, and training will be necessary to ensure long-term success. Equally importantly will be the move from large business transformation projects to smaller more manageable step projects with each step delivering value.

-        Governance – while accountability and performance management are key, more transparent and streamlined management structures supported by clearly defined goals and objectives and an empowered team with minimum interdependencies will be needed to make things happen in the timescales required, and more importantly to make the new ways of working stick.

-        New inter-departmental operating models that reflect how citizens interact with Government. This will enable the benefits of efficiency programmes to be driven in support of public services rather than across them by limiting the scope to individual functions within Departments (as is sometimes the case today).

-        Adoption of innovative technologies to support the customer-centric operating models, including the use of technologies such as Web 2.0 for collaboration between departments and for engaging citizens; better business intelligence and predictive analytics to support policy development; and the use of cloud computing and virtualisation technologies to reduce the cost of IT.

The Operational Effectiveness Programme sets out a framework for improved efficiency and productivity in government operations to deliver an additional £15 billion savings, of which £6bn will be within this spending review period.