Agenda item

The Chair welcomed County Councillor Peter Buckley, Cabinet Member for Community and Cultural Services; Glyn Peach, Chief Digital Officer; and Josh Mynott, Democratic and Member Services Manager, to the meeting.

The report presented provided an update to the Internal Scrutiny Committee on the current and forthcoming work relating to Member Development, the Digital Strategy and the BTLS Transition of ICT services back to Lancashire County Council.

The Member Development Working Group monitored and reviewed the member development programme. It ensured that training and development met councillors' needs and also ensured that training was commissioned appropriately and effectively.

Lancashire County Council's Digital Strategy was approved by councillors in October 2019. The strategy set out the principles on how the county council would move towards a digital delivery model. The emerging priorities supplementing the digital strategy came from the Improvement Journey Programme. The priorities focused on customer experience, employee experience and strong foundation platforms.

Regarding the BTLS transition back to the county council, the committee was informed that the contract with BTLS would come to an end by March 2021. Once the transition programme was completed there were ten vision statements (programme outcomes) that the county council would aim to adhere to:

1. Be able to fully support the business from an IT perspective

2. Be able to look at potential cost savings across the business

3. Be able to procure new IT services

4. Be able to put plans in place to continue to improve the quality of the IT

  service we provide

5. Be in a position to provide commercially viable services to external third

  parties

6. Have a smooth Transition for our in-flight projects from BTLS to LCC

  (including all external projects with WLBC, LANCON, LCC initiated and  BTLS initiated)

7. Have no licensing liabilities (under licenced software)

8. Have no unresolved compliancy issues

9. Have the management structure to run the service

10. Understand the cost of providing IT support at a business level & fully

  understand the breakdown of the cost and value of the returned services.

It was suggested that a Bite Size Briefing could be held in six months' time where the above ten vision statements could be looked at in more detail by county councillors.

It was noted that the level of IT skills varied hugely across all county councillors. It was vital and a challenge to provide a tailored solution for all county councillors. Lancashire County Council would continue to pilot and run schemes through the Member Development Working Group. This would mean member involvement in finding solutions.

Regarding the policy, members stated any policy should have clear targets for reducing the amount of paper the county council used and also the policy should have reference to disabilities. Reducing the amount of paperwork was an aspiration for the county council and it was looking at providing something for disabilities in the policy. Members who had a disability were encouraged to contact the Member Development Working Group.

Resolved: The Internal Scrutiny Committee note the report presented.