Agenda item

(Director of Resources) to consider the attached report.

The Assistant Director (ICT & Facilities Management), Mr Newton introduced the report on the progress of projects within the ICT strategy. Last year 91% of projects were completed on time. This year had seen ICT concentrating on strengthening the resilience of both systems and infrastructure with a number of key systems being out hosted.

As this existing strategy nears completion, work has already started on the next round of the ICT Strategy 2018/2023 which will be presented to Cabinet in due course. Cloud based options for both systems and infrastructure are already featuring heavily.

In the near future, most software products will only be available via subscription payments. Historically, software had been purchased outright from capital but this change in supplier behaviour would necessitate a switch to revenue expenditure.

It was noted that:

·         The majority of desk top printers had been replaced with 26 high performance multi-Functional Devices;

·         We have now two Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) purchased under the invest to save scheme. At present we only have one Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) qualified pilot; another staff member will be qualified shortly. First flight had already taken place for Planning Enforcement. Requests have also been received from Housing and external organisations for hiring the UAV;

·         The website was now completely out hosted to an external site and all phone calls are carried over the internet;

·         Modern.Gov has now also been out hosted, which proved problematic at first, the system is now stable;

·         GOOD was now part of Blackberry who had introduced faster response times and other minor improvements;

·         New storage solutions have been implemented successfully, with an increase in disk space to 9 Terabytes;

·         The E-Financial system had now been upgraded; and

·         The security devices and appliances used by ICT were now in place.

Councillor Dorrell said that the problems with Modern.Gov went on for a long time; would we get any credit for this? Mr Newton said that we were in dispute with them about this and that we were not aware of any credits for this at present. Out hosting was ultimately of benefit but getting there was sometimes painful.

Councillor H Whitbread asked if we could commercially hire the drone (UAV) services. Mr Newton said he would welcome it; we already had the Forestry Commission approach us to do a count of deer. We were happy to work with outside agencies, but we have not promoted our services as yet, but will do it soon. Councillor Lion added that he was not sure that we had a commercial package in place and if we could make a profit. Mr Maddock said that he did not see any issues with hiring out our services for the times when we were not using it; but we could not deliberately go out to make money.

Councillor Patel asked about the business contingency plans and were they detailed enough so that anyone could follow them in an emergency. Mr Newton said that they were fairly easy to pick up. Next year the email system will be hosted in the cloud.

Councillor Patel asked about the replacement printers. Mr Newton said that we only had 15 desktop printers in place from the 140 we used to have. The MFDs were now in place. Councillor Bedford asked if we had bought them or were they under contract. He was told that we had a contract with Xerox. Councillor Lion asked if Members would be trained on the use of the MFDs. Mr Newton said he would arrange something for the Members.

RESOLVED:

That the progress on ICT projects during 2016/2017 were noted by the Select Committee.