Dave Mader, former controller at the Office of Management and Budget and civilian sector chief strategy officer at Deloitte, discusses what the President’s Management Agenda says about shared services.
A portion of the President’s Management agenda is aimed at shared services. While efforts to implement shared services have been in the pipeline for years at the White House, the PMA has outlined how the agencies will use the strategy to modernize and save money. “I spent two-and-a-half years working on [shared services] and what was nice to see was, during the time of the transition, Beth Angerman and her team at USSM (United Shared Services Management Office) continued their work on really important infrastructure… no time was actually lost between the end of the last administration and the rollout of this cap goal,” said Dave Mader, former controller at the Office of Management and Budget and civilian sector chief strategy officer at Deloitte. Because agencies aren’t used to sharing resources, Mader said that some culture change is needed in the government. “Change is hard, and I think that one of the challenges this administration’s going to face, the same challenge that I faced in regard to shared services, is convincing people to let go of the past and understand that these different approaches [are] not one size fits all,” Mader told Government Matters. “You can’t force people into one sort of configuration. You have to be flexible. You have to recognize the uniqueness, but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the efficiencies and effectiveness.”