In the past, it seemed that these shared programs might be confined purely to administrative functions that were far removed from customer-facing roles. However, studies have revealed that restricting the exchange of services in this way only saves between 1.8% and 3.6% in expenses. To achieve the kind of savings that local authorities must achieve, the exchange process must move much further up the “supply chain” towards areas where there is closer contact with the citizen.

Initially, there will surely be concerns that the interests of citizens could be compromised in this scenario, either due to poor service or security problems. Indeed, there are many who argue that the sharing process actually presents as many opportunities as threats and that valuable lessons can be learned from the private sector, especially companies like Tesco, which may have many different departments dealing with the same customer.

Tesco is a world-class company precisely because it is always one step ahead of its customers and anticipates their needs. You almost know what your customers want before they do. By storing all the data elements about each customer obtained from their historical habits, the company can fairly accurately forecast what they may need or expect in the future.

This combined knowledge could prove equally useful to public authorities in improving the experience of their citizen customers and saving money in the process. In other words, public service providers should not be alarmed at the prospect of sharing individual services or even bundling them wherever possible.

The more customer inquiries that can be handled by the first point of contact, the more money you can save. Nothing increases delivery costs more than people being diverted from one pillar to another before a problem is finally resolved. Private sector experience is that up to 15% of total delivery costs can be saved with first satisfaction.

Of course, there are those who would argue that anything that centralizes personal data is bound to raise “Big Brother” type concerns, but it should be remembered that all the necessary data is stored anyway and it really shouldn’t matter if it is or not. fragmented and in different places or aggregated in one place. Surely the main consideration is that the public receive the best possible service at the lowest possible cost.

When there are genuine security and information sharing concerns that need to be addressed, network operators can usually accommodate them. MLL Telecom, for example, is a leading provider of network services to public sector customers and is used to meeting security and confidentiality requirements. Although the entire premise of a shared network is that all traffic runs on the same infrastructure, the company can still provide virtual private networks for groups of individual users using a technology called multi-protocol label switching.

It seems that all the traditional objections to network and service sharing in the public sector are really quickly evaporating, while the benefits continue to gain ground.