OMB says there has been “significant progress” in creating the governance, strategy, and funding models to support broad adoption of shared services, while also issuing a new memo on the issue.
Progress to date, it said in a blog post, includes: reinforcing and strengthening the role of the policy owners and line of business managing partners in establishing government-wide outcomes and common processes; engaging stakeholders and standing up new governance bodies, including the Customer Council and the Provider Council; and researching and advocating for ways to manage and fund investments so they can be leveraged by multiple agencies.
The new memo, M-16-11, is designed to institutionalize the initiative through steps including:
Establishing a process to review agency investments in administrative functions, including financial management, human resources, acquisition, grants management, and the IT expenses.
Publishing a playbook of best practices and lessons learned from across government in IT migrations and upgrades, and aligning investment reviews to the budget process.
Fostering collaboration with leaders of the Category Management cross-agency priority goal.
Establishing ProviderStat, a collection of cost, quality and performance metrics from federal shared service providers.
Strengthening shared services supply by establishing requirements, assessment criteria, and a designation process to help drive common standards for process and performance.
