Agenda item

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 of internal systems

  • Recommendations re password management

  • Details of the IT refresh programme

The Scrutiny Board also requested that the following items be added to the Work Programme:-

  • Details of Service Level Agreements

  • A report on the IT Asset Register

  • An opportunity to input into developing the ICT Strategy which is to

    include benchmarking and SMART targets

RESOLVED that the Scrutiny Board notes-

(1)  The role that ICT and Digital play in supporting the Council’s priorities

(2)  The ICT and Digital team structure and the apprenticeships available each year through the Entry to Employment Team

(3)  The uptime of systems, the security of the network and the ability of ICT and Digital to restore services in the event of an incident

(4)  The issues facing the service now and in the future

(5)  The assurances received in relation to questions sought by the Scrutiny Board