Government Shared Service Centers

Last time, I had written about the essence of Think, Design & Make in India, as opposed to Make in India.

This time, I would like to talk about an environment where the Government Back Office Processes are being handled by a Central & State Government run shared services organization.

This could be run leveraging the Federal & State owned infrastructure respectively, which are governed & driven by the Nodal IT agencies, as they already are the backbone of state wide IT & functional operations.

They bring together the repetitive back office work and enable it to be done far more efficiently by dedicating key resources who do a specialized job.
Due to the large amount of document load, they should be able to make it a profitable venture.

What all could be covered?

HR, Finance, Operations, IT kind of shared services which are setup and run by the government.

Key back office tasks like Payroll Processing, Leave Approval, Hire-to-Retire Process Automation, Appraisal Management, Accounts Payable, Vendor Onboarding & Accounts Receivable would come under the umbrella of such an organization.

If you look at verticals like Banking and Manufacturing you would find such best practices have been adopted and they have been quite successful in not only cutting down of costs, but also employing more people with a specialized skill set. The same model has been undertaken by developed countries like US, UK & Australia in their governance strategy.

The idea is not to outsource it to a private player. It could work on a turn-key basis with the IT Nodal agencies driving this initiative and the thought process. The idea is to enable the government to create more jobs, while saving Tax Payers money at the same time.

Same Location, More Opportunities?

Giving employment to thousands of people in low cost areas, meaning more valuable jobs and infrastructure in tier 2 & tier 3 cities. In the future, The Digital India Capacity Building initiatives in collaboration with a government shared service center, citizens would not have to look outside their hometown in order to get a government job.

Since the Central & State government IT Nodal agencies already engage and drive the IT planning for Government. It would be the best way forward, for them to adapt and embrace this service model as a more efficient way of cutting down on costs across the state.

If the Public Sector Banks can adopt this method of working, I don’t see a reason why the government of one of the largest democracies in the world won’t make it work?

‘GST Network’ is a kind of a specialized venture on these lines related to GST within India.

Maybe we can extend the thought to envision something far more comprehensive?

What are your thoughts on this?