“However, the government’s half-hearted approach is not making the most of this opportunity.  The government needs to take a much greater interest in its corporate services and make these potential savings a reality”. 

Mr Bacon, a member of the Commons public accounts committee, was speaking as the National Audit Office published its report into on improving corporate functions using shared services.  Shared services are about combining corporate service activities across different parts of an organisation, or across different organisations, to bring efficiency savings and to improve services. 

The Cabinet Office has estimated that central and local government spends £7 billion a year on finance and human resources services, and that government departments could save £1.4 billion a year on these functions by implementing shared services. 

However, the report finds that there has been limited progress in measuring the performance of corporate services to date or demonstrating how they can be improved through shared services.  There are no accurate figures for savings from shared services across the whole of central government and only small savings have been reported so far.