Six London councils are undergoing an Oracle shared services implementation, in a move expected to save £18m over four years.
The London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Brent, Lambeth, Lewisham, Havering and Croydon will be implementing the same version of Oracle release 12. Implementation will be complete at the end of July 2013.
The technology will support the introduction of HR, finance, payroll, pensions and procurement functionality across all six boroughs as part of Project Athena, supported by Capital Ambition.
Mike Suarez, executive director of finance and resources at Lambeth council, said: "Because it's a single instance it means the platform lends itself enabling us to share things like servers and applications team for supporting software, as well as taking a shared approach to training."
The total nvestment for the project between the authorities will be millions of pounds, but Suarez said because they were buying in aggregate it will be less than if each council was individually undergoing the upgrade.
He said more councils are expected to piggyback on the deal, once the system is in place.
Lambeth Council led the procurement exercise, with outsourcer Capgemini tasked with the implementation. Earlier this year Lambeth CIO Ed Garcez spoke to Computer Weekly about the project and said it was in the councils' shared interests to ensure it succeeds. "The political priority is that we all have resources for front line services, and things are done collectively," he said.
