The Ministry of Finance and the Public Service is reporting that the shared corporate services pilot project, which is being implemented at several ministries and agencies, has been a success.
Portfolio Minister, Dr. the Hon. Nigel Clarke, said the services being tested are Procurement, Human Resources, Finance, Legal and Audit.
“We have had shared services at the Ministry of Justice, Finance, and the Ministry of National Security, and the shared services in Finance have been focusing on bank reconciliation, and on supplier account reconciliation,” he noted.
“Benchmarked against service-level agreements, scores came out at 100 per cent for the Ministry of Justice, 86 per cent for the Ministry of Finance and 83 per cent for the Ministry of National Security, which indicates that we are good to go to move forward,” Dr. Clarke indicated.
He was delivering the keynote address at the opening of the 2024 Caribbean Public Sector Financial Management Conference, at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in St. Andrew, on Wednesday (May 22).
The shared services pilot allows for testing of the implementation approach before commencing a full rollout of operations.
Dr. Clarke said that full implementation of shared services across government will allow for greater financial management, improved efficiency in the delivery of services to the public, greater accuracy and for the development of skills of public-sector employees.
“It is not necessary to physically replicate, in several locations, the same function across 200 or more government entities. What we can do is have a dedicated facility in which a lot of people are housed, and they provide a service to the various government departments and agencies,” he pointed out.