Agenda item

To receive a report from the Head of Service Delivery ICT providing the information required to undertake the first session of the Board’s Inquiry into ICT capacity.

The Head of Service delivery ICT submitted a report which addressed the areas of focus for the first session of the ICT Inquiry, namely;

·  Review of the capacity and related costs within ICT Services allocated to maintenance of current IT systems and infrastructure which support the Council, the current service levels achieved/support hours covered and whether these are sufficient.

·  Review of the capacity available in ICT to deliver projects, the use of 3^rd party suppliers and contract staff to support project delivery and the number of projects being requested.

·  Review of the effectiveness of governance arrangements within Directorates - are they successful in filtering project demand and in assessing the value of proposed projects

The following were in attendance to respond to members’ questions:

-  Bev Fisher, Head of Service Delivery

-  Roger Green, Portfolio Manager.

Introducing the report, officers described the work of Leeds City Council ICT Services. In brief, work fell into three categories; ‘keeping the lights on’, that is work undertaken to keep ICT systems (infrastructure and applications) up and running through proactive maintenance and reactive fault resolution.  Secondly ‘small projects’, keeping up with software updates released by vendors; adding additional functionality to existing systems to improve business efficiency or implementing new technology solutions and thirdly major Council projects that include ICT systems and data.

Approximately 70% of ICT effort is focussed on ‘Lights on’ and 30% available for project work.

In summary the main areas of discussion were:

·  The volume of active major and small projects.

·  The capacity of the ICT service to deliver both ‘lights on service’ and projects.

·  The number of service users supported by ICT Services and number of devices and the increase between 2013-14 and 2014-15.

·  The results of the 2015 benchmarking.

·  ICT staffing budget, the management of vacancies and the use of agency staff.

·   Issues around recruitment and retention and the concerns that ICT services in the Council could not compete in the market and so were in danger of not being able to provide a robust service. (this would be the focus of session two)

·  The governance arrangements in place to review project requests which require ICT resource.

·  The processes undertaken by Directorates to determine their ICT requirements and the level of challenge provided in that decision making process in relation to overall Council priorities.

·  Collaboration with other public bodies in the city.

Whilst not part of the agreed terms of reference the Board discussed the recent floods and ICT resilience. Members were concerned that at a time when communication with constituents and others was at its most essential, email and leeds.gov.uk was down for a period.  This raised serious concerns in the minds of members around risk management, the robustness of the Council’s ICT infrastructure and contingency planning.

Concluding the discussion the Board, whilst acknowledging that further evidence gathering sessions were to take place, did agree that some initial observations and conclusions could be made around the management of project prioritisation and the lack of corporate challenge and coordination and also the potential benefits of a peer review. 

RESOLVED –

  (a)  To receive and note the information provided to address session one of the Inquiry

  (b)  That the Head of Scrutiny and Member Development write to the Head of Service delivery detailing the Board’s initial observations and conclusions.