Survey Shows IT Shared Services Offer Significant Benefits – and Some Challenges
As kids we learned a simple yet powerful lesson that taught us a lifelong truth: sharing resources leads to positive outcomes.
Today, federal IT managers are learning that lesson all over again. Except now, the toys being shared are managers and resources devoted to websites, content, performance, and infrastructure management, among other things.
The White House’s Federal IT Shared Services Strategy mapped out this approach when it was released in 2012. Three years on, how is it going? That was one of the questions posed by a recent survey of federal IT pros by my company, SolarWinds, and Market Connections.
In the survey, we defined IT shared services as “the entire spectrum of IT service opportunities either within or across federal agencies, where previously that service had been found in more than one part of each agency.” We asked respondents to comment on a number of things, including the benefits and challenges of IT shared services.
Here are some key takeaways:
Overall, IT professionals view IT shared services in a positive light. Fifty-nine percent of respondents claimed that a shared services model within government is likely to provide a superior customer service experience. This is important as federal IT pros continue to look for better ways to deliver services to their customers.
As a result, shared services are gaining traction. More than half of the survey respondents (54%) indicated that their agency or department is a recipient of IT shared services from another agency or department. Forty-two percent of respondents claim their agency or department is a shared services provider.
Federal IT managers are enjoying the benefits. Our survey respondents listed saving money by eliminating duplication (60%), achieving economies of scale (54%), and standardizing IT service delivery for more consistent performance (52%) as the top IT shared services benefits. Other key benefits mentioned included freeing staff to focus resources on value-added tasks (41%), providing innovative solutions at the program, bureau, and agency levels (37%), and the opportunity to adopt best practices within and across agencies, leading to better trained and skilled staff (30%).
Still, there are some challenges. According to survey respondents, cultural resistance – a growing theme within federal IT ranks – is the main roadblock to IT shared services. More than half of the respondents (56%) feel that changing to a new system remains the biggest challenge to the shared services model. Other factors that were mentioned include decreased flexibility to respond to new needs or requirements (37%), inadequate executive buy-in (37%), and the feeling that managers are being forced to replace existing tools or service providers with agency-sanctioned solutions (35%).
In spite of these hurdles, the fact is that, overall, federal IT pros appear to be highly optimistic about shared IT services within their agencies and departments. And despite only 21 percent of leadership seeing shared services as a current focus, those who have employed the strategy appear to be seeing real and significant benefits that directly address one of the primary objectives of every federal IT team – greater efficiency.
Shared IT services are helping streamline government IT operations by:
- Helping federal IT become more agile by pooling resources across different departments.
- Eliminating unnecessary redundancies.
- Providing cost and time benefits – both valuable commodities for financial and resource constrained IT departments.
As for the cultural shift, this too is indicative of something that is happening in federal IT in general. Federal IT managers are being asked to become either more versatile or specialized. They’re also becoming more accustomed to DevOps models that combine development and operations teams in new and exciting ways.
In fact, shared IT services are kind of like a cousin to DevOps, incorporating similar DNA strands that necessitate a different way of thinking. It’s an approach that’s less about being siloed and restrictive, and more about being open, inclusive, and sharing – just as we’ve always been taught.
By Joel Dolisy, CIO, SolarWinds
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