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Welcome to the Shared Services Online Summit

The Shared Services Online Summit will bring together leaders from across the public sector to debate the issues that determine the success of shared services and the key challenges that need to be addressed at each stage of a shared services project.

The debate is taking place over 7 days from 19 to 23 February 2007. A 'virtual think-tank' of over 80 people has been assembled to create the core of the discussions, drawn from public bodies as diverse as the Cabinet Office, the Scottish Executive, and Hampshire County Council.

The event is being organised by new media publisher Headstar and Enterprise Events, and the debate goes live at 00:01 hours GMT on Monday, 19 February 2007.

The debate is taking place on a web-based 'bulletin-board', where participants can read what others are saying and make their own contributions. More detailed instructions on the use of the debate board can be found in our Help file.

Alongside participation from think-tank members, anyone with an interest in the topics under discussion is welcome to contribute. We greatly appreciate such input. All the same background and other materials will be available to non-think-tank participants, and all comments will be used to feed into the same final debate report.

The main difference is that non-think-tank members will not be registered to the site in advance, they will have to register themselves; and contributions from outside the think-tank will also be directly moderated, that is to say they will be read briefly by a debate chairperson to check their relevance before being posted onto the site. We will post up all relevant contributions without editing; this is just a check to prevent abuse of the process.

The debate closes at 23:59 hours GMT on 23 February, and the debate area of the site will be closed from further posting at that time. Users will still be able to read messages that have been posted, but not continue to contribute.

Following the debate's conclusion a detailed report on all that took place, including summaries of the debate within each theme, recommendations for policymakers, and edited transcripts of the debate, will be written.

Around two months after the debate closes the report will be published and copies circulated to all think-tank participants.

It is our hope that further events will also take place. All participants in this event, both think-tank members and those taking part in the public area, will receive details of these events as and when they happen.

Happy debating!

Dan Jellinek
Debate Chair
dan@headstar.com
+44 (0) 1273 267 172