Agenda and minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

The Minutes of the meeting held on 5 March, 2018 were signed as a true record.

Further to Minute 28 relating to “Work Programme”, the Scrutiny Board noted that the item on Business Rates would now be considered by the Scrutiny Board at their next meeting.  

Briefing Note of the Deputy Chief Executive, People

The Scrutiny Board considered a Briefing Note which provided an overview of the ICT and Digital service.

ICT and Digital publish two strategies that support the Council’s priorities, the Corporate ICT Strategy and the Digital Coventry Strategy. ICT and Digital supports the sustainable growth of Coventry’s economy by ensuring residents and businesses have access to superfast broadband speeds as a minimum.  The recent investment of £2.55 million to the CSW Superfast Broadband project will see 99% of homes in Coventry having access to superfast broadband speeds by summer 2019.  It improves the quality of life for Coventry people through the use of technology to monitor traffic and air quality across the city.  The investment of free public Wi-Fi across the city centre will see the implementation of a low power network that will enable the installation of further sensors that could monitor anything from weather, traffic, and air quality and population footfall. ICT and Digital will support the delivery of the Council’s priorities with fewer resources.  The on-going development of the corporate data warehouse will ensure that the Council’s information assets is available for analysis and reporting, ensuring that key information is in the hands of decision makers.

The Briefing Note provided information on the following:-

  • Staffing levels and management structures

  • Use of contractors working in ICT and Digital

  • Apprenticeships and work experience

  • Uptimes of core systems

  • Application support and backups/restores

  • IT health check carried out by a qualified 3^rd party on a yearly basis as

    part of a Public Sector Network compliance

  • Systems Consolidation Strategy and application strategy

  • The Digital Coventry Strategy

  • Themes for review as part of the strategy update to include Technology

  Consolidation, Artificial Intelligence/Automation, Big Data/Machine

  Learning and Cyber Security

The current ICT and Digital Service Plan was appended to the Briefing Note and detailed current services priorities and plans. The following challenges that the services faces were identified:-

  • Staff retention

  • Cyber security

  • Doing more with less money and resources

  • Speed of technology change

  • User adoption

  • Structure, Strategy and Target Operating Model

The Briefing Note indicated that the next steps for the short to medium term future included the review of the target operating model and a refresh of the Corporate ICT strategy. The current strategy was focussed on the enabling technologies to enable the organisation to move to Friargate. The upcoming themes that will be included are Technology Consolidation, Artificial Intelligence/Automation, Big Data/Machine Learning and Cyber security. The strategy will also look to support the delivery of the City of Culture Programme.

The Scrutiny Board asked questions and sought assurances from officers in relation to:-

  • How futureproof current investments in ICT and broadband are

  • Peer benchmarking and how Coventry compares with other Local

    Authorities

  • The uptime of internal systems

  • The IT asset register

  • Ensuring that the workforce is IT skilled

The Scrutiny Board requested that the following information be circulated:-

  • The uptime  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32.

Outstanding issues have been picked up in the Work Programme

The Scrutiny Board noted that all outstanding issues had been picked up in the Work Programme.

Report of the Scrutiny Co-ordinator

The Scrutiny Board considered a report of the Scrutiny Co-ordinator that detailed the Work Programme for the remainder of the Municipal Year.

RESOLVED that further to Minute 32 above, the following items be added to the Scrutiny Board’s Work Programme:-

  Details of Service Level Agreements

Report on the IT Asset Register

An opportunity for the Scrutiny Board to input into developing the ICT Strategy, which is to include benchmarking and SMART targets

Any other items of public business which the Chair decides to take as matters of urgency because of the special circumstances involved

There were no other items of urgent public business.