| Description |
Public and private organizations create shared services, the common allocation of internal business services between units, to reduce costs and improve service quality. While prior U.S. reorganizations and reforms suggest that business practices in the public sector seldom achieve the promised benefits, shared services literature suggests it may be different by targeting only a narrow range of back-office functions for consolidation. This dissertation employs a mixed methods case study to determine the similarities between shared services in the United States and other public shared services implementations and to assess whether shared services truly improves cost efficiency and service quality. In 2005, the State of Utah created the Department of Technology Services (DTS) to consolidate and share information technology resources across all state agencies. This dissertation uses interviews with key stakeholders and document analysis to examine the motives for creating DTS as well as the results, benefits, and challenges of the new shared services organization. A time-series regression analysis of financial data tests whether state IT expenditures decreased significantly after the DTS shared services consolidation and an analysis of survey responses from Utah state agencies explores customer perceptions of DTS service quality. This study finds similar motives for the creation of DTS as with other shared services implementations including cost efficiency, service quality enhancement, and iv central control of services. Much of the DTS shared services implementation mirrors that of other shared services implementations around the world. However, this dissertation finds that while DTS realized several cost efficiencies including a reduction of staff and the centralization of servers, statewide IT expenditures did not significantly decrease after the creation of DTS as hypothesized. Furthermore, while Utah policymakers credit DTS with improved IT security and the centralized delivery of state technology resources, state agency customers do not believe they are better off in terms of higher-quality services. While additional research is necessary to extend these findings to additional cases, the research in this study questions the positive portrayal of shared services in the literature. |
