"tim....." wrote in message
...

what systems can you merge with "economies of scale?

Lots of functions that are common to any business - e.g. procurement, HR,
finance.

and if you can, why are they not already merged across the whole of
government anyway (my example of IT support really being one that I expect
HMG to have got expensively wrong here).

A colleague of mine was telling me of a business tranformation project he
worked on at a large local authority. The savings identified by merging
common business functions across the LA were huge, to the extent that the
consultants (of which he was one) were happy to share the risk by providing
a loan to fund their fees that would be paid off from the savings after
project implementation.

The project was cancelled when the unions called a strike over the loss of
their member's jobs that would result from the project: the politicians
responded by cancelling the project.

--
DAS