Association of Colleges
Shared Services
Shared Services
The AoC has two areas for Shared Services:
Efficiency Innovation Fund
The Efficiency and Innovation Fund (EIF) is an initiative that arose in 2010 with £4.6 Million allocated by Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills, to the SFA to support the AoC and the FE sector deliver “an innovative suite of shared service solutions”.
The EIF funding has been released in two rounds to support 41 shared service projects involving over 200 Colleges. Further information can be found here.
Until recently, the FE sector lagged behind other public sector organisations in exploiting the benefits of shared service solutions. The AoC Shared Services team is working with the Colleges involved to find out in detail about the projects and gather information. We are now working on disseminating learning materials to the sector in the near future. This will cover:
- lessons learnt
- successes
- challenges and how to overcome them
- advice on how to approach collaboration and shared services.
What is Shared Services:
A shared service is basically the shared provision by one or more organisations of a specific service or function – from waste management to exam administration, finance and HR.
The aim of the EIF fund is to help Colleges – at a time of austerity and cutbacks – to develop and test different collaborative models to:
- identify ways of improving service delivery of both back office functions and frontline services;
- determine where efficiency savings can be made; and
- find solutions to barriers and problems that collaborating groups can come up against.
Collaboration and Shared Services Grant
The AoC and the 157 Group Collaboration and Shared Services Grant will be used to develop innovative work by FE sector organisations to drive forward significant efficiencies and innovation.
AoC held the first Innovation Committee meeting on 2 June and the majority of its 24 College Principal/Chief Executive members were able to attend. The Committee discussed the supervision, allocation and process of the £6.5million shared services money granted to AoC by the SFA.
It was agreed by the Committee that in order to help the sector in terms of applications and making processes clear and transparent, the bids and assessment process should be joined with the 157 Group to ensure a single process as they too have an allocation of funds. The funds will be granted for the development of innovative work to drive forward significant efficiencies and innovation within the FE sector.
Contact
Lesley Templeman - Senior Project Manager - Shared Services Efficency Projects, Tel: 07827 277 096
Indy Gihir - Shared Services Project Manager (EIF), Tel: 07584 528 727
Shireen Al-Khalili - Shared Service Project Manager (Grant Funding), Tel: 07713 886 700
Morag Henderson - Shared Services and Procurement Administrator (EIF), Tel: 020 7034 9966
