Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies for absence were received from County Councillor Parkinson, County Councillor Gooch and County Councillor Turner.

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

No pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests were disclosed.

Resolved: That the minutes of the meeting held on 2^nd March 2021 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

A report was presented by Glyn Peach – Chief Digital Officer, providing an update on the transition of BT Lancashire Services back into the county council, implementation of the digital strategy and its associated action plan. The report also provided an update on how ICT had supported the pandemic response/enabled home working and looked at how the actions would also help support new ways of working post pandemic.

Covid – the Cabinet Committee noted that, whilst not being able to deliver to the original digital strategy action plan due to the Covid pandemic, significant progress had been made through BT Lancashire Services ICT Services and Core Business Systems providing a significant level of support to the county council. Over 60 projects had been set up and key projects were outlined as follows:

Establishment of an IT system for the temporary mortuary facility; provision of assistance to the Registrars Service to modernise their IT systems to the new way of working from home; working in partnership with other authorities on the early Track and Trace solution; integrating Partnership/Provider systems and sharing data with NHS, Public Health England, Adult Social Care and other authorities; provision of an electronic service to enable Lancashire residents to continue to connect with Lancashire County Council.

Agile working – due to the pandemic, the number of laptop users had to be upscaled very quickly and the number of desktop users descaled. In addition to providing Members with laptops, approximately 1,850 laptops had been issued to staff and couriers had been used to collect the devices from County Hall and deliver them. BT Lancashire Services had worked very quickly to enable people to connect to the county council network remotely, resulting in over 8,500 staff working from home. This had been a seamless transition due to the efforts of BT Lancashire Services staff and accolades had been received for this work. In addition to the provision of laptops to staff and Members, 3,350 laptops had been issued to children at Lancashire's schools.

Document Handling Service – prior to the pandemic, only 45% of incoming mail was being scanned so the postal/printing system had had to be modernised to make it more efficient. As a result, 95% of mail received by the county council was now being scanned and emailed onto relevant colleagues. In addition, the majority of printing had been migrated to the post room to be printed and sorted for collection by Royal Mail, which had significantly reduced postal charges.

Office 365 – the Digital Services Team had worked with Microsoft, BT Lancashire Services, Communications and other partners to enable the swift deployment of Office 365 to all staff and Members. A significant amount of housekeeping had been completed in preparation for this and any security issues had been dealt with.

Networks & Infrastructure – during 2020/21, a major upgrade to the core wired and wireless infrastructure had been delivered for the county council which provided faster connections and improved security. The county council had partnered with Govroam  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

An item of Urgent Business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the minutes, the Chairman of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Members' intention to raise a matter under this heading.

There were no items of Urgent Business.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement will be held on Thursday 1^st July 2021 at 2.00pm.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement would be held at 2.00pm on Thursday 1^st July 2021.