Local authorities need to embrace shared services as an opportunity to make substantial savings, rather than focus on ownership of technology, according to the head of public sector applications provider EzGov Europe.

Central government currently accounts for 90 percent of EzGov’s business, but chief executive Frank Moyer said that the UK local government market is now the target as it comes under more pressure to embrace the shared services model.

Moyer argued that more use of shared services will make substantial savings for local councils. “It’s cheaper to make a few changes to an existing application, than to build it from scratch,” he said. “The sharing of IP is very important.”

Moyer gave the example of a housing benefits system recently built by EzGov for Edinburgh Council, which features an open-source framework, calculator and claims estimator, and reduces the number of questions by 50 percent.

“We want to get the housing system rolled out across the UK, and we’re looking at parallel methods to achieve this: going direct to individual local authorities and partnering with other technology companies,” Moyer explained. “If a different local authority wants a version of the system up and running in three weeks, it’s just about changing the brand and the data. We can get a new application launched for under £10,000, which offers substantial savings.”

However, Moyer conceded that there are obstacles to the shared services model. “Selling to local government is a challenge. They’re acting on specific initiatives for their authorities and one of the biggest problems is getting them to deploy technology invented elsewhere,” he said. “If there is a backlog of housing claims, it’s an easy sell. But if they don’t happen to need the system anyway, it’s more difficult.”

Moyer also recommended that any public sector IT project should make provisions for user feedback at an early stage. “The user interface is so important for getting transformational government right. As part of the requirements-gathering process, we develop j-flows – wire frames together with a flow through the application – and they’re signed off by the customer,” he explained. “When HMRC [HM Revenue & Customs] was looking at the next release of self-assessment, we developed it for them and they went out to get user feedback. We also used an independent organisation for quality assessment.”

Government IT projects also require management improvements to help minimise future failures, according to Moyer. “IT projects require effective management on both the supplier and buyer sides to make them successful. The most important success criteria for the government going forward is to recognise failure earlier,” he argued. “EzGov has delivered 106 projects on time, these were behind schedule at times in the development but we just made sure we managed to catch up.”

Meanwhile, the current focus on the environment could be a useful tool for the government in trying to drive more uptake of online and shared services at the local authority level.

“The environment is top of the agenda for many US politicians and it will be a key driver in the UK as well for pushing out online initiatives, which the government will start mandating more of,” Moyer said. “To say people don’t have computers isn’t true and if you can eliminate the paper chain, the savings for government are tremendous. The environmental message will help the government justify the mandates.”