Ms Hilary Murphy-Fagan:

First, we will need more staff. When finance shared services is fully up and running, we will have to recruit more staff to carry out that work on behalf of Departments. Within the NSSO, we currently have three divisions. We have employees' shared services, which is responsible for all HR and payroll services. We have our corporate service division in the centre. When finance shared services commences operations, it will be the third pillar. What this means for the NSSO and the work it does is that, effectively, what we will have to do will be to integrate all of the systems behind the scenes. As data flows from the HR system through the payroll system and into the finance system, we will have to connect all those systems together. To date, those big clunky legacy systems have not been connected. They have not needed to be connected but they will now all be automated and connected.

The second thing it will mean is that we will have, for the first time, a single payment source of information because all of the suppliers that are paid by Government will be on our systems going forward. This is a significant automation and enhancement of procurement information. At present, it requires a large manual effort to gather information such as, for example, that which the Deputy inquired about in the context of full-time equivalents. One can imagine the significant benefits of having all of the suppliers on one system because we will make those payments on behalf of Departments and offices.