Getting more from your corporate services budget

The latest PwC benchmarking of government corporate services shows that over the past two years the cost of corporate services appears to be reducing relative to the overall cost of the entity but these savings have been made through short-term measures that are unlikely to be sustainable.

The study shows the cost of corporate services as a proportion of total departmental expenses for smaller entities is almost double that of the larger entities, which benefit from economies of scale.

This suggests that smaller agencies would benefit from sharing services with their larger cousins in a particular portfolio area or similar function, such as regulation.

The benchmarking study found that only 5% of agencies were confident that these short-term tactical measures would deliver the intended return on investment over the long term.