SHARED SERVICES Community of Practice

1. SHARED SERVICESCommunity of Practice A Persistent Learning Community of Senior Executive Practitioners

2. Net/net… • Continuous pressure on government to improve services, share information and business processes, and gain economies of scale • Technologies long-established within jurisdictional and operating boundaries are now expected to transcend them • Major new movements in the business and technology of government – eHealth, integrated justice, NIEM, ERP, SOA -- must be accommodated while leaders continue to optimize complex existing portfolios • And – do it all with fewer resources • Shared services have emerged as a means to this end Harvard Shared Services Presentation

3. Five Key Challenges for Practitioners • FINANCE/RESOURCE – how can public organizations best finance complex shared services when statutory or other restrictions make stockpiling investment capital or operating at a loss until profitable difficult if not impossible? • GAIN SUPPORT/AUTHORIZATION – how can public sector leaders marshal the support necessary to make the moves to shared services that create superior public value for all? • LEAD CHANGE AND GOVERN – what are the issues and challenges for executive sponsors facing the complex move to shared services linking technologies, business process, and government authorities? • METRIC, MEASURE AND COMMUNICATE RESULTS – how can baselines and gains best be defined, measured , interpreted – and used to alter trajectories, communicated to gain needed support? • MANAGE RISK – how can overall readiness for shared services best be assessed, risks identified, and capabilities understood so that investments in improved performance, training/skills can be made that yield high value returns? Harvard Shared Services Presentation

4. What We Have Found • MANY ARE ACTIVE Many jurisdictions are now embarked; while others are contemplating, and some are well along the road • EXPERIENCE IS VARIED -- AND DEEP (IN POCKETS!) There is enormous experience in these matters now among some senior executive practitioners in the public and private sectors…but for others just starting, the search can be frantic • CHALLENGES SAME BUT – DIFFERENT All have similar and differing challenges, depending on their place on the maturity curve • LEARNINGS ARE REPEATED AND NOT WIDELY HARVESTED OR DISSEMINATED The great learnings that are available are not routinely harvested or shared with each other – except via the default repositories of knowledge, our vital community of technology and service providers • THE COMMODITY LAYER OF KNOWLEDGE IS THINNER THAN EXPECTED OR WARRANTED. Knowledge that should comprise re-usable, open, accessible knowledge is hard to find, acquire, use…or build and replenish. The wheel keeps turning • PRACTIONERS ARE SILO’D/ISOLATED: No connective tissue/rails of innovation connecting COOs, CTOs, CIOs along lessons learned, “hot button”, “over the horizon” issues of technology, business and applications Harvard Shared Services Presentation

5. What We Are Embarked On • Convening senior most shared services practitioners from the public and sector to Harvard May 29-31 to explore these matters • Operating with grants from Accenture and Microsoft • Validate a set of “hot button” and “over the horizon” issues in • Financing • Political Management and Change Leadership • Technologies • Risk Management • Governance and Implementation • Determine “appetite”, interest, go-forward issues for a persistent learning community for shared services practitioners, supported by investigators and the technology/service provider community • If warranted, map out an action plan to establish it and its major issue sets Harvard Shared Services Presentation

6. And, Investigating These Questions… • How might we best build the commodity layer of knowledge for shared services practitioners – so that we “put to bed” the basics of our business? • How can we best free up the community of technology and service providers to compete on innovation and value-add rather than on basics? • What standards and agreements should we reach that would speed this move to competition on innovation and value-add rather than on basics that belong in the commodity layer? • How might we best harvest and reinvest knowledge and learnings from the community of practitioners back to the community so that the community is ever-learning, available, and persistent over time? • Action research and investigation, cases? • How might we best connect senior-executive practitioners as trusted peers so that they have available real-time access to trusted peers for “hot button” and “over the horizon” consultations on issues they are facing? • Web enabled, other channel “ready-networks”? • How might such a community of peer practitioners best sustain itself – operationally, financially, and with content – over a defined period of time? Harvard Shared Services Presentation

7. Invitation to KSG/Cambridge May 29-31 • Join us for these important meetings • Tuition free/travel only • Harvard faculty: • Steve Goldsmith on public/private partnerships • Malcolm Sparrow on framing public challenges correctly • Jerry Mechling on the challenge of technology-enabled cross-boundary transformation • William Snyder on communities of practice • Open to major Federal, state, county and municipal line of business owners and CIOs and executives Harvard Shared Services Presentation

8. GETTING THERE>>>>>> • Please visit our event page here for details : http://ksgexecprogram.harvard.edu/program/lnw4/overview.aspx • You can see the agenda here: http://www.lnwprogram.org/lnwprogram/workshop_shared_services • We’d love to count you among us. To attend, you must apply, here: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/ee/sharedservices .(hey – it’s Harvard, whaddya expect?) Harvard Shared Services Presentation

9. WHO ARE WE, ANYHOW? • An Executive Education program of the John F. Kennedy School of Government • STRATEGIC FOCUS: is upon ways in which partnerships and alliances can form up across boundaries for public purposes. • CUSTOMER SET: Senior-most executives in government and industry, arrayed around "burning platform" topical issues in health and human services, education, environment, military matters, government administration, and related concerns. • LONG TERM GOAL: to develop highly networked, persistent learning communities for senior executive practitioners, with Harvard as a "lever of change", harvesting "live action" research from practitioners and reinvesting it in their learning communities by executive education means • TACTICAL FOCUS: Explicating by case study, classroom engagement, and research offerings pathways for change via lessons learned for leadership, political management, and financing of such complex cross-sector initiatives. Harvard Shared Services Presentation