Public Sector Shared Services Move Out of the "Back-Office": The Role of Public Policy and Mission Criticality

Shared service providers typically host routine and administrative business processes as a way to standardize company practices and increase efficiency. In the public sector, however, its application to functions critical to an organizations central mission is moving shared services out of the back-office. This research employs and extends Bergerons (2003) framework to case analysis of two public safety networks within the United States, and prompts the addition of two new characteristics for public sector shared services, Public Policy and Type of Service. In this sector, we find that legislative controls, i.e. policy, manage information and communications technology (ICT) investment to meet efficiency and especially effectiveness goals, while mission criticality serves to trump cost considerations. Recommendations resulting from this research should lead to improvements in the cost and performance of public-sector shared services and their role in ICT-supported, mission-critical, shared services.