What is Shared Service

Stimulated by recent advances in information and communication technology, and in their continuous pursuit for ways to reduce costs while at the same time improving customer orientation, public agencies have started to share services. By unbundling services of multiple public agencies, standardizing these services, and concentrating them in a separate organization, the basic premise of shared services seems to be that services provided by one local department or agency can be provided to others with relatively few efforts, potentially resulting in both cost savings and service quality improvements (Bergeron, 2003). Public agencies share their role as service provider by joint development, operation, control, and governance of services. As such, the sharing of services can be viewed as a particular type of sourcing arrangement. Services remain within public administration, and public agencies control and govern the shared-service arrangement.