The Ministry of Justice has joined the shared services system - Photo credit: PA

The Cabinet Office yesterday announced that the MoJ had transferred around 75,000 employees’ data onto the single IT operating system in the past month, which is claimed as a “major milestone”.

The migration is part of wider efforts to transfer government back-office functions such as human resources, finance and payroll onto a single shared services programme.

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The aim is to cut costs through efficiency savings, while making government IT systems more efficient – it will be one of the biggest platforms for government in Europe when complete, with more than 300,000 users.

“Shared service centres deliver business services at a significantly lower cost to the taxpayer while ensuring effective services for government and the public sector wherever possible,” said minister for the constitution Chris Skidmore.

“I welcome this important step towards realising over £300m of savings for the taxpayer [by 2024] through implementing shared services across government.”

The Cabinet Office’s programme to transfer back-office functions came under fire from the National Audit Officer last year for failing to achieve the anticipated savings.

Its report, published in May 2016, said that the programme had suffered from poor leadership and a lack of consideration of how to match departments’ needs with the systems they were required to migrate over to.

The NAO said at the time that the government had only delivered £90m in efficiency savings during the two-and-a-half years the programme had been running, while it had invested £94m in the scheme.

At the time, the NAO said that just two of the 26 departments and agencies that were meant to join the single operating system - the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Environment Agency - had completed migration to a single operating platform.