GLA publishes shared services target

A consultation document published by the London mayor titled GLA Group Budget Proposals and Precepts 2011-12, says that a range of activities are under review to find out where further savings and efficiencies can be made through shared services. Besides the GLA itself the other organisations covered by the review are the Metropolitan Police, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. The £450m target uses this year's budget as a baseline. According to the document, the scale of the shared services programme means that significant savings are unlikely before 2012-13. The only savings recognised in the 2011-12 budget are related to projects with a fully developed business case. They cover finance and procurement, legal services, democratic services and internal auditing. ICT and websites will be scoped in January to March 2011, along with customer services, procurement and HR. In addition, the paper says the Metropolitan Police expects to achieve savings of £13.1m through ICT efficiencies and contract rationalisation. "With the new government's drive to reduce the country's budget deficit and everyone feeling the squeeze, it is even more important that we do all we can to protect Londoners from tax increases while maintaining and improving London's public services," says London mayor Boris Johnson in a forward to the paper. The document also gives unaudited figures for Transport for London (TfL) actual ICT spend of £133m in 2010-11, against a forecast of £194m. The figure is estimated to reach £214m in 2011-12. TfL's technology spending commitments include installing a new control centre and computerised signalling system on the Northern Line, set for completion in 2014. The aim is to cut journey times by 18% and increase capacity by 20%. It's also replacing signalling and the train control system on the Jubilee Line, work which is scheduled for completion this spring. The GLA's draft capital spend for 2011-12, which totals £531,000, is made up of £88,000 on PCs, £90,000 on monitors, £54,000 on printers, £289,000 on servers and file storage, and £10,000 on laptops. The GLA says that during 2012-13 this spending will rise to £860,000. This figure is made up of £88,000 on PC base units, £54,000 on printers, £50,000 on laptops, £318,000 on servers and file storage and £350,000 on Microsoft software licences. It expects spending to fall to £694,000 the following year. The Metropolitan Police Service's Olympic-related security costs between 2010-11 and 2012-13 are £226.6m, and include capital IT costs estimated at £12.6m in 2010-11, £8.5m in 2011-12 and £600,000 in 2012-13.