Agenda item

ICT Update and ICT Shared Service Business Plan 2020/21

Minutes:

The Deputy Leader (non-statutory) introduced the Shared Services Business Plans 2020/2021. He provided an explanation of the governance arrangements for the shared services.

 

The committee received an update on ICT from the Deputy Head of ICT. There was a detailed discussion during which the Deputy Head of ICT informed the committee of the following:

·         Disaster recovery tests would be carried out for new systems and a full network disaster recovery test would be carried out. Regular disaster recovery tests would be carried out on network infrastructure going forward.

·         Backups were used on a regular basis. The ICT service knew how long it took to recover each service, application or data from scratch. The current plan required each council to provide ICT with their priority applications for recovery. This was provided to ICT by each council’s Intelligent Client.

·         Regarding the service’s KPI-2 Service Availability, the target of 95% was queried. The Deputy Head of ICT informed the committee that this equated to several days of downtime per year, which was not considered to be acceptable as residents wanted to access council services 24/7. He explained that the service was running above target.

·         The relationship with the County Council was explained and the committee was informed that the ICT service used the County Council’s data centre room. Given the County Council’s move from Shire Hall, a new location for this was being discussed. The committee was informed that South Cambridgeshire District Council was responsible for its server unit and that there was no requirement for a generator here.

·         The committee was informed that the ICT service had an asset register, which had been audited.

·         The Deputy Head of ICT was confident that all single points of failure could be identified and that there was resilience in these areas.

·         Corporate risk management decisions would be escalated to the Shared Service Board and from there issues would be escalated to Cabinet if appropriate.

·         The telephony project was underway, which South Cambridgeshire District Council was leading. Designs had been proposed and requirements developed with key service areas. The plan was to go out to market in around June 2020.

·         The Deputy Head of ICT explained the processes and measures that were in place to protect against cyber security attacks.

·         Information was held in a central repository which all 3 councils could access.

·         The committee was informed that not all vacant posts in the service had been filled but recruitment was ongoing. These vacancies were difficult areas to which to recruit.

·         The Deputy Head of ICT explained how funding was split across the 3 authorities.

·         The committee was informed that customer satisfaction would be surveyed through a general staff survey, however the timescale for this was not yet known.

·         The Chamber equipment upgrade project would include the AV equipment, not the microphone equipment.

 

It was noted by the committee that documentation requested, such as IT Security Policy, Business Continuity Plan and others had still not been provided.

 

The committee noted that the albeit incomplete Council Anywhere project was delivering significant improvements and had put the council in a strong position with regards to the Covid-19 outbreak. However, the committee noted that the resilience of the ICT infrastructure was not being tested frequently enough and following significant changes. 

 

Members requested that text on coloured background was not used in reports as this was not easily legible.

 

The Vice Chairman requested a copy of the ICT Security Policy be circulated to all members of the committee.

 

The committee noted the update and thanked the Deputy Head of ICT for this.

 

 

Supporting documents: