Mr. Robert Watt:

Within the Civil Service there are about 48 bodies, so we have what we call transactional HR. In terms of the recording of leave, absenteeism, the basic infrastructure, data management that underpins a HR system, which determines ultimately what people get paid, their pension and their entitlements, those transactional HR activities were undertaken by each public body in the past. Each Department, and it could be a small Department or the Revenue Commissioners, would be dealing with their own transactional HR.

There are benefits in consolidating the system in terms of reducing the costs, reducing the numbers of people involved, getting economies of scale from technology, and also getting a more standard approach to information across the system so that we get much better information in common.

PeoplePoint, in effect, is a shared service which is consolidating transactional HR into one place, which previously was devolved across the system. That is the motivation for it. The motivation is twofold: to save money over time but also to improve the quality of information.

To give one example of it, in the past it would be very difficult for us to get common information on sick leave across Departments. It would have been a major exercise for us to go to HR managers; it would take weeks. With PeoplePoint we will be able to generate a report, say, on overtime allowances, or the numbers of people in different offices. It provides us with information to enable managers to manage more effectively.

The other key benefit is Departments can focus on what we call the retained or strategic HR. Rather than engage in personnel functions the HR transactional function is to engage in strategic HR around finding out what is happening with sick leave, what is happening with underperformance, whether we are allocating staff in the right places and investing in learning and development. It is to enable the HR units to focus on what we call strategic as opposed to transactional HR. That is, in a nutshell, the essence of what we are trying to achieve.