Case study: SPINE
2 What Our questionnaire response tells us that SPINE (Shared Partnership in the East) is: A partnership of library authorities comprising Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk, focused on sharing back office services built on a shared library management system platform. Questionnaire Response The organisations involved are Cambridgeshire County Council (library service), Suffolk Libraries IPS, Suffolk County Council and Norfolk County Council (library service). According to our questionnaire response for this partnership, the partners did agree joint objectives, which were formalised in a written memorandum of understanding, the partners do have plans to work together again in the future and the partnership was evaluated. SPINE began as a partnership between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk library authorities and only expanded to include Norfolk more recently. It s built on sharing a library management system, that s our IT platform [ ] SPINE is about the shared backbone or shared back office services in order to both share good practice and to reduce costs. First and foremost, SPINE has involved the joint procurement of a library management system. However, interviewees felt that it was also an umbrella that could enable further joint ventures to take place. Similarly, although SPINE has been based around a joint procurement, interviewees also explained that, as a partnership, it also had a deeper role than just that: SPINE is about procurement but it s also about a collective understanding and problem-solving really about how to make the new product as effective as possible. So although we were involved together in a procurement exercise and purchased it together, we had two separate implementations, and there was a significant partnering over the implementation process obviously to maximise learning on both sides about what was going on. The partnership has also led to a joint library catalogue between Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Why Based on conversations with interviewees from the three library services involved in the partnership, a number of motivations emerged for this partnership, which are outlined below. Value for money Perhaps out of all the partnerships we have considered as case studies, this one was most straightforwardly driven by value for money as its primary motivation for existing was to share a system and back office costs between two library services as this would save money.
3 When the partnership was initially being set up, value for money was very much at the forefront of the objectives. It was this agenda that prompted the initial discussions, which in turn led to the partnership. The initial discussions were very broad in their scope [ ] and over the course of many months of discussion, the two authorities who most wanted to take something forward became Cambridgeshire and Suffolk who had a particular opportunity around both needing to re-procure our library management systems. So it was on that basis that we took it forward. Value for money was a driver to get together. However, value for money was perhaps not the exclusive primary driver, or perhaps not as central as it might immediately appear to be: Value for money, although it appears to be the obvious motivator, actually it often isn t, I mean because value for money is a good one in that we ve all got to save money and obviously everybody has got to try and do everything as cheaply as possible. However, on its own that isn t enough. What you ve got to have is something that appeals to everyone s higher value or higher sense of purpose. Improving the service for the customer Joining together so that customers can borrow books from libraries in areas outside of their own local authority this may improve the experience of library users. This will especially be the case for those who live near a county border and may go and do their errands in a county that is different to the one in which they live. I think the other driver is improving the service to the customer. I think it is about enhancing customers experience. Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge all share borders. We all have customers who live and work across a border, whichever one that may be, and if there are ways of us working together that make it easier for people to use our services and more convenient to use our services, then we ought to be doing that, not just living within a geographical boundary that the customer may not recognise. Pooling capacity and sharing best practice The partnership pools capacity to investigate and share good practice [ ] Both of us are quite similarly resourced so we will take the lead individually on different things and share the learning with each other [ ] SPINE is a benefit to us because we pool our expertise with colleagues.
4 And this is one way in which, although the partnership was motivated by a desire to reduce costs, it is in fact about so much more than that. It isn t just about the money now. It s about the future [ ] SPINE is a procurement partnership but absolutely at the heart is the vision and the value. Talking to the supplier as a consortium gives them more power The partners felt that they had more power with their supplier when approaching them collectively rather than individually. Talking to the supplier as a consortium brings a lot more strength with it. We together have some influence over the vendor of the system. You know we can work together on putting influence on them. Sharing technology is a good starting point for partnering in other ways Sharing a technological system was the starting point for SPINE but interviewees felt that this was only the starting point, and that sharing a library management system would enable them to work together in all sorts of other ways. The opportunity that SPINE brings us is the three authorities all being on the same technology and that being a starting point then for looking at all sorts of opportunities. For example, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire are already lending stock between the two authorities. How There are opportunities that come with sharing the catalogue, with lending, with potentially procurement. According to our questionnaire response for this partnership, this was the contribution that each partner made: We jointly procured and paid for a new library management system and associated contracts, together with the legal and other costs of the project. We jointly work on projects to implement associated benefits. Questionnaire Response
5 Interviewees expanded on the process behind implementing the partnership: It came out of earlier discussions that took place some years ago between all of the library authorities in the east of England to look at potential for collaboration and partnership working. So there was a lot of discussion about a concept called SPINE at that time which was really about shared back office services. ) From these conversations, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk decided to take the partnership forward. Although Cambridgeshire and Suffolk jointly procured the supplier who would create their new library management system, they each hold individual contracts with that supplier. We actually hold separate contracts with our supplier, even though we share a joint database. So in that sense, we re still quite independent. Obviously we negotiated those together but in terms of the financing of it, we still pay separately for our contracts with the supplier. But the actual build of the system is completely jointly owned and shared. The library services involved in SPINE also share other back office services. A major subset of [the back office services that we share] is our sharing of a joint library management system which is our IT platform which is obviously a very important part of our back office delivery. It controls everything from circulation of books, the acquisition process, all our customer records etc so it s a major part of how we deliver the service. Sharing this platform has meant that Cambridge and Suffolk can also share other aspects of their services. Cambridgeshire and Suffolk jointly agreed to share that platform and to jointly procure it which we did, and that means we also share a database and we lend stock between us across our borders. We ve also worked together in terms of our bibliographic and IT services and we ve delivered shared training and other things. When the partnership first started, Suffolk libraries were part of Suffolk County Council. However, since then Suffolk Libraries has become separate from Suffolk County Council and have now been a distinct entity for almost three years. Therefore, Suffolk Libraries are a partner in SPINE along with Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Country Councils (of which their library services are still a part), but Suffolk County Council is also a partner because they still hold the contract for the library management service provider. Norfolk has joined the partnership more recently, and this has opened the door to thinking of new possibilities regarding what the partnership might be and do.
6 As Norfolk has now joined us, we re continuing to explore what are the further opportunities for joint working around our back office services. SPINE has been about what can be done together by having a shared library management system. What we are also exploring what we can do together that is not totally dependent on a shared library management system. What worked? Our questionnaire response for this partnership said that the most important factor for determining the level of success of the partnership was financial savings. As the joint procurement that the partnership has undertaken has resulted in savings, it is considered successful. We ve both saved a considerable amount of money from not separately procuring. We re all positive about it, we re achieving the aims we original set out. Beyond the savings that the partnership helped to bring about, there have also been other elements that respondents considered to have been successful. Other areas of their services For example, mobile libraries. Suffolk came up with a new solution for providing connectivity for mobile libraries which it led on and then it shared all of that good practice with Cambridgeshire. Partners were willing to compromise I think the key thing is that there has to be compromise. Clearly we had to agree the terms of our contract, we had to agree the system build and set-up, all the parameters and processes as we both had our ways of doing things previously. And so we had to harmonise a lot of processes, procedures and agree new ways to do things [ ] There has to be a real commitment to the partnership.
7 It has widened networks The partnership has built some capacity because we now know who each other s experts are in various aspects of our service and in a sense that s increased our resilience. Challenges Interviewees from the partnership also identified some challenges that have been encountered so far and also potential challenges that may arise in relation to this partnership or one like it. Challenges that have been encountered so far Norfolk County Council, who have recently joined the partnership, have a more up-to-date version of the library management software than Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Therefore, they currently have a different system to that which is central to SPINE. Norfolk cannot become truly involved until Cambridgeshire and Suffolk upgrade their system and it has not yet been decided when this will be. Norfolk hasn t started sharing systems because we joined SPINE a bit later and we re on a different version of the library management system so we re going to have to wait now for the other two services to upgrade before we can do this. We would then be able to share data. We re still talking about when that might happen. It s at that point that we would start to get the efficiencies. There is also the fact that any partnership will automatically become more challenging and less simple when additional partners are added into the mix. A very simple arrangement between Suffolk and Cambridgeshire immediately becomes more complex as soon as you add anybody else into it. But we have a reasonable and practical understanding about what we will and will not do together. Since the partnership started, Suffolk Libraries has switched to a very different governance mode and this transition required a significant amount of time to be devoted to it, which meant that they had less time to devote to the partnership. This draws attention to the fact that ultimately each library service must prioritise the needs of its own local authority above the needs of the partnership. Due to its relatively small size (much smaller than other equivalent local library consortia such as the South East Library Management System (SELM)) some interviewees felt that this meant SPINE was slightly weaker than these other partnerships in terms of its resilience. The larger library consortia, such as SELM, employ someone to manage the partnership and interviewees could see that this would be helpful. Sometimes I wonder if it would be useful to have an independent facilitator who could provide that challenging role.
8 Challenges that may arise A partnership that is so heavily based upon the sharing of a technological system is necessarily dependent on that technology working and continuing to work for all the partners involved: I think that conceptually joining services together sounds fine and then when you attempt to do it, it gets hamstrung by the technology. Norfolk joining the partnership may lead to difficulties if their commitment does not match that of the existing partners. The growth of the partnership will necessitate further protocols and agreements, which can be difficult and time consuming: As partnerships like ours get bigger, they are much less likely to have the same congruent purpose. You know the more people, you know it s just a fact of life that that is the case so you do have to be really clear that you re getting people signed up to things. You have to do that through protocols and agreements, I think. As partnerships increase, more significant amounts of time will need to be devoted to managing them: And just thinking of my service, we partner with Suffolk and Norfolk in SPINE but we ve also got partnership relationships with an East Midlands grouping for book purchasing. That s a different consortium. We partner with Northamptonshire for Council support services and we re beginning to partner with Peterborough around some shared services. So I can see my future involving managing a very wide array of different relationships with different partners for different purposes, and it all being very complicated actually. And it s time-consuming, very time-consuming and I m slightly cynically thinking that in fifteen, twenty years time we re bound to reinvent this all again. Evaluation The initial part of the partnership, in which the joint library management system was purchased, received funding and was therefore evaluated because this was a stipulation of this funding. However, since then the partnership has not been evaluated in any formal sense, partly as it has been felt to have been so successful, but it has undergone periodic review from the partners themselves at meetings. We haven t formally evaluated the partnership, apart from the initial project. We had funding [ ] specifically for the purchase of the joint library management system and for that, we had to evaluate the success of the project, but as an ongoing partnership we haven t formally evaluated it. We keep it under regular review through our board meetings.
9 There isn t currently a sense of need to take stock or to seek external help to evaluate. If it was beginning to run into trouble or slow down, then we might get to that point but at the moment it s still relatively new so it s been very much about delivering our original aspirations for the partnership.