Agenda item

To consider the attached report.

The Assistant Director ICT, Mr Newton, introduced the updating report on the Technology Strategy. He reported that the implementation of the new corporate project management system, PENTANA, enabled the monitoring of the entire transformation process. Accordingly, all projects from the Technology Strategy had been entered into the system, making PENTANA the central point of reference for the ICT work programme. This report was the first generated for the Resources Select Committee using this new process and was identical to the report presented regularly at Leadership Team meetings. Members were invited to comment on the format and give any feedback to be used to develop the report to improve future presentations.

The Committee noted that there would be a rollout of 420 new laptops of which half had so far been distributed. The Council had purchased ‘Office 365’ as their new system. They were also replacing the old VPM technology with a better system to enable better out of office working. This also enabled them to replace old technology with newer ones.

The ICT Operations Manager, Mr Bacon, added that this type of PENTANA report was tight and focussed showing cancelled and delayed projects.

Councillor Hadley said that he would like to see just how many projects had slipped and when. He also asked why the laptop build happened in house; why not let HP do it? Mr Newton said that it was cheaper and quicker to build them in house. Mr Bacon agreed that they could add slipped projects into future reports.

Councillor Whitehouse asked why T7.01.05 (service desk satisfaction survey) had been cancelled. She was told that this had been rolled up into a larger piece of work, but more information could be added if needed. Councillor Stalker asked if this could be had as an exception report.

Councillor Bedford asked about T6.02.23 (SQL Server) and why had it been given a due date of 31 March 2023 when it had been completed in 16 April 2018. This was a bit of an overestimation as it had been done in two weeks. Mr Bacon said that they had made the wrong assumption on this.

Councillor Lion asked if, as part of the satisfaction survey, members were going to be surveyed as they were customers too.

Councillor Hadley asked if ICT had a Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place. Mr Bacon said that they did and part of that agreement was to tell people what was happening and about any problems as quickly as possible.

Councillor Patel asked if they put in a ‘critical path’ for the projects and put in a progress bar. Also as it was a new system how were they finding it? Mr Newton replied that they could not manage their strategy without this new tool. Mr Bacon added that as the projects were based on themes and capital budgets they could see progress at a glance. Councillor Patel asked Mr Maddock if he used the system. He said that he was considering it at present.

Councillor Patel then asked how easy was it to use the system. Mr Bacon said that initially it was hard as they had to train all the staff, but now that they know what it could do they were happy to use it.

Councillor Patel then asked how they would tweak the format of the report. Mr Newton said that they would take into consideration what had come out of this meeting. Also if members had any other comments to make they could contact him separately at any time.

RESOLVED:

1)    That progress on ICT projects  within the current Technology Strategy 2018-2023 be noted; and

2)    That the committee reviewed and made recommendations on the reporting format of the PENTANA project management software.