Does government need a FITARA for shared services?

"The stars are aligned" for a bill that could codify the use of shared services across government, much like the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act galvanized support for agency CIOs, said John Marshall, founder and CEO of the Shared Services Leadership Coalition, at an AGA leadership conference panel on Feb. 23.

Marshall said a shared services bill might find fertile ground on Capitol Hill this year. He said that with the Obama administration looking for legislative wins, and Congress looking to show the public it can agree and unite on something meaningful, such a bill could be possible.

Shared services, he said, have been a common idea in every presidential administration for the last quarter-century. What's differed has been each administration's approach. A law that sets up best practices and other common rules would speed implementation of the services across government, much like FITARA did for IT.

However, Matthew Miller, assistant commissioner of the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said the move to shared services must be based on an "adopt standard, improve standard" approach, under which service provider agencies adopt a uniform service model that customers then follow. Providers would in turn look to improve the service as time passes and capabilities change. Without that common approach, Miller said, much of the value of using shared services disappears.

With tight budgets and pressure to find ever greater efficiencies, shared services' time is right, said Elizabeth Angerman, executive director of the General Services Administration's Unified Shared Services Management organization.

Angerman said agencies must realize that just because they might be doing something well that's unrelated to their core mission, that doesn't mean they should necessarily continue to do it. "You can give it to someone else," she said, to free up resources for the mission.