Minutes:
The Scrutiny and Overview Committee received an update from the committee’s Vice Chairman on the work of the Scrutiny ICT Working Group. He provided an overview of the group’s concerns, which were:
· There had been a lack of testing and resilience of the newly transferred ICT equipment.
· There was a lack of 3C ICT documentation and no central store of information.
· A number of documents were still works in progress.
· There was no exit plan should a decision be taken by any of the partners to exit the service.
· There was no asset register.
· It was difficult to find out what the structure of the service was.
· There seemed to be a lack of transparency in relation to the governance of the service, with no minutes or agendas of board meetings available.
Huntingdonshire District Council’s Corporate Director and the Chief Executives of Huntingdonshire District, Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils were in attendance for this item. They provided an overview of the founding principles of the service, which was to collectively pool efforts to develop a robust platform from which to deliver an ICT service. The committee was informed that:
· Due to turnover of staff that had been involved in the setting up of the shared service, some corporate memory had been lost.
· Each authority should have its own repository of information rather than there being a central store of documentation.
· There was no exit plan as at the time of set up of the service, the vision was that it would be an enduring relationship. An exit plan had been planned within one year but had not been actioned.
· The programme officer function had originally been based at Cambourne, but had moved to Huntingdonshire.
· South Cambridgeshire District Council had an Intelligent Client, who monitored performance and acted as the bridge between the organisation and 3C ICT.
· The current governance structure was explained. Governance had changed and evolved and the Chief Executives had been exploring whether a different governance structure was needed for this service. It was acknowledged that the governance was not as strong as it could be. Options for shared scrutiny would also be looked at.
· There was a fine line between what was 3C ICT’s responsibility and what was the responsibility of the individual authorities.
· Minutes had been taken of 3C board meetings.
· Whilst it was recognised that governance could be better, 3C ICT had worked for South Cambridgeshire District Council at a strategic level. Any recommendations for how things could be done better would be welcomed.
· Improvement of the Intelligent Client capacity was being looked at.
· There was a partnership agreement.
· When the service was set up it had been decided not to do so as a separate legal entity, as the service needed to be fit for expansion before this could be considered.
In response to queries from the committee, members were informed that:
· Director level meetings took place at least once quarterly and often took place once a month. South Cambridgeshire District Council had always been represented at these meetings. Minutes of these meetings had not always been taken however when they had been, they had been shared with the three partner authorities. All formal governance meetings had been formally minuted. It was pointed out that these were not publically constituted meetings and therefore the minutes and agendas were not available in the public domain.
· Regarding the ICT outage, the committee was informed that this had been caused by two once in ten year events which had occurred in quick succession.
· The relationship between 3C ICT and the three councils was a partnership rather than a client/provider relationship.
Committee members suggested that:
· The service’s Terms of Reference should be reviewed.
· Facilitation of collective scrutiny of the ICT shared service be explored. In response to this the committee was advised by officers that the appropriate level of scrutiny should be considered and that the service should not be over scrutinised; the level of scrutiny should be in line with that of the other shared services.
· The formal reporting mechanism to the partner councils needed to be improved.
· The role of Lead Cabinet Members and Portfolio Holders needed to be looked at.
· Learning needed to be taken from the other shared services, which were working well.
· There should be a shared document repository.
The Scrutiny and Overview Committee thanked the Chief Executives and Corporate Director for attending the meeting and supported them looking further at the governance of the 3C ICT service.