Agenda item

To consider the report of the Chief Officer Housing and Chief Digital & Information Officer which provides an update relating to the Housing ICT System (Civica CX) and how it integrates with other systems. This includes an update on the agreed workarounds and temporary arrangements that have been implemented, and what work is ongoing to continually improve the systems and integration.

The Chief Officer Housing and Chief Digital & Information Officer presented a report which provided an update relating to the Housing ICT System (Civica CX) and how it integrates with other systems. This included an update on the agreed workarounds and temporary arrangements that have been implemented, and what work is ongoing to continually improve the systems and integration.

Members attention was directed to the following points of the submitted report:

·  Point 2 showed the issues of concern raised by the Committee.

·  Points 7, 8 and 9, provided information on ongoing work to address the points of concern raised with key internal stakeholders, Housing ICT Project Board which had been Chaired by the Director of Resources and Housing until Housing moved to Communities, Housing and Environment in April 2022. It was now Chaired by the Director of Communities, Housing and Environment and had been attended consistently by the external supplier, Civica and colleagues from Finance, Housing, IDS and the Contact Centre. It was noted that an internal audit of Civica CX was currently in progress. It was to review any workarounds implemented to address known issues, assess any processes that had been put in place to identify, track and prioritise issues that had arisen since implementation, and look at what actions had been taken to address, mitigate and report on these.

·  It was noted that Civica CX had gone live in August 2021, as the previous system had not been compliant and was outdated. It had been recognised that there would be temporary workarounds put into place while further improvements were made. 

·  Members were advised that not all external contractor’s systems were integrated with Civica CX and some payments to contractors required some manual intervention.

·  Point 16 provided a table which highlighted the workarounds.

·  It was noted that there was a typing error on the table at point 17. Where it said Spring, this should be Autumn.

Members were of the view that all issues needed to be resolved as soon as possible to minimise any impact to customers, particularly on repairs and voids orders.

Responding to Members questions information was provided which included:

·  An update on the timescales for the integration work required to be completed will be provided to the Committee at a future date.

·  Weekly meetings take place in relation to issues and solutions for the system with an escalation process in place.

·  The contracts that are in place with Housing contractors included clauses to state that it is the responsibility of the contractor to integrate their ICT systems with the Council’s system(s).

·  It was acknowledged that lessons had been learnt with the implementation of Civica CX, and going forward with core business transformation, Internal Audit would be involved at the beginning of any future projects, including being able to check and challenge decisions to go live.

·  It was noted that Internal Audit were building working relationships with IDS and there were now arrangements in place for writing specifications for new systems. It was also noted that record keeping had been improved.

RESOLVED – To:

a)  Note the contents of this report.

b)  Agree that following the successful upgrade of Civica CX (programmed for Autumn 2023) and the conclusion of the IDS Integration workstream, that a further report is provided to the Committee if any of the issues are still outstanding; and

c)  Note the ongoing Internal Audit work, the outcomes from which will be reported in the relevant Internal Audit Update Report.