Agenda item

The Committee considered a report on the Service Governance and Performance Monitoring of the County Council's strategic partnership with BT covering the period October 2015 to February 2016.

Further information providing a more comprehensive measurement of service delivery was presented at Appendix 'A', including the key performance indicators against which BTLS were monitored.

The achievement of key performance measures were reported as follows:

·  ICT Services: all contractual performance had been met through the period October 2015 until February 2016 and performance against the contractural targets remained strong.

·  Payroll and Recruitment Services: all contractual and non-contractual performance targets had been met during the same period.

The Committee's attention was particularly drawn to the following:

·  The PAs telephony system needed to be upgraded;

·  A pilot scheme that would enable citizens to access high speed wi-fi from local libraries had been launched.  Early feedback was favourable and a formal assessment of the feedback would help shape and influence the facilities in public centres in the future.

·  A range of activities were currently underway to support the integration with other public services and in particular health;

·  The review of the financial management arrangements and particularly the non-affordability spend with BTLS continued.  Better scrutiny of requests for new equipment coupled with better management of desktop refresh had resulted in a much lower spend on PCs and laptops in 2015/16 compared with 2014/15.  The non-affordability spend in 2015/16 had reduced by more than £500,000 as at the end of January 2016 compared with the total spend in 2014/15. A saving of £1m had also been delivered on the affordability budget in 2015/16 through the Schedule 11 budget which covered both ICT infrastructure and desktop refresh.  This would be an on-going saving;

·  A new mobile phone contract would be signed shortly.  This would allow better management of the mobile phone estate and result in a reduction in charges;

·  The identification of a future solution for the Council's data centre was a key priority and options including the possibility of moving to a cloud storage strategy would be presented to Management Team in April.  It was suggested that consideration be given to locating the data centre within the County Archives building;

·  The asset management programme had moved into its implementation stage;

·  The implementation of the customer access system was expected to go live in July/August;

·  Work had commenced to upgrade Talis Alto.  The contract would be novated to BTLS with an upgrade completion date of September 2016;

·  BTLS had identified that many Startwell Services were poorly supported by the existing Impulse system which needed to be upgraded and implemented by August 2017 to meet the statutory deadlines of school admissions; and

·  Customer satisfaction with the services provided by BTLS and in particular ICT had improved.

The Committee welcomed the performance of BTLS against the agreed performance indicators, and the approach being adopted to ensure that ICT and payroll services supported and contributed to the strategic priorities and objectives of the County Council.

Resolved:  That the report be noted.