Agenda item

The Leader introduced the report that confirmed that following the recommendations of the Scrutiny Review Group in 2016, Cabinet agreed to join the Shared Resource Service (SRS) and transfer the Council’s IT service into this partnership with Torfaen, Monmouthshire, Blaenau Gwent local authorities and Gwent Police.

 Eleven investment objectives highlighted the important improvements Newport wished to get from this arrangement, at the core of these were the following requirements:

•       to develop a responsive, continuously improving IT service;

•       the rationalisation of systems across the partnership;

•       high quality, continuous staff development;

•       an IT infrastructure that delivers resilience and quality of service;

•       the development of business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements including out of hours support as appropriate;

•       support for the delivery of digital goals as outlined in Newport City Council’s Digital Strategy.

The report confirmed that the Council recognised the importance of investing in its IT provision.  This meant that when lock down began the Council was already equipped to enable both staff and Members to continue working whilst not attending their usual place of work.

Since joining SRS there have been improvements to both the IT kit and the support systems.  The partnership has jointly developed new systems, such as the CRM system, and have rolled out Office 365.  Whilst being part of a wider partnership has helped the Council to improve its service, the Leader thanked the Council’s in-house Digital Team for the work they have done to ensure a continued improvement in performance and also enabling the Council to maximise its investment.

The report stated that in order to meet the objectives of a resilient IT infrastructure and improvements to business continuity, the plan was to move the current data centre from the Civic Centre to the SRS purpose built data centre in Blaenavon.  However, following a further evaluation by SRS of the costs for Newport and the other partners of continued operations within Blaenavon, compared to a move to an even newer purpose built data centre, the outcome of the evaluation is that it is, overall, cheaper for all partners to move to a new data centre.

The business case developed by SRS is supported by the Finance and Governance Board of the Partnership and a recommendation to proceed then made to the SRS Strategic Board (the Council is represented on both Boards at senior officer and Cabinet Member level).  The business case has recently been signed off by the Strategic Board and now each Cabinet of each local authority in the partnership is being asked to give approval.

The report details both the revenue and capital costs of the move.  The report noted that moving the data centre to ensure resilience in line with the original Cabinet decision would always have a cost, regardless of whether this was a move to the current SRS data centre or a new location.

The report confirmed that moving all partners to the new premises will take up to three years and at that point there will be an increased revenue cost for Newport.  However, this has been anticipated and is within the MTRP.  Within this is also a budget for the on-going update of the data centre, which will be required every five or so years.  It was noted that this increased revenue cost is partially off-set by a decrease in the energy costs at the Civic Centre.  The Leader was pleased to report that this will also support the Council’s carbon reduction plans and will see an approximate 92 tonne annual reduction in carbon as a result of less energy consumption at the Civic Centre.

The report confirmed the required Capital expenditure is within the current IT capital refresh plan and does not impact on the ability to ensure the on-going resilience of the remaining core infrastructure that is needed across the estate to operate.

The Leader invited the Cabinet Member for Community and Resources to speak to the report and as the Cabinet representative on the SRS Strategic Board he confirmed he fully supports the agreement of this proposal.  He stated that the safeguarding of systems and data and future proofing this is vitally important as we have all become reliant on IT and Digital infrastructure, never more so than since March when we entered lock-down; he confirmed that within four days of lockdown 1200 council staff were enabled to work from home. 

The Cabinet Member referred to the Corporate Plan’s commitments in relation to this which was to become a Modernised Council, where digital was the default, and to create a Newport Intelligence Hub, so that the Council had better access to intelligence to support its operations. The Cabinet Member believes the way the Council responded to lock-down, in a very short period of time, is absolute proof that we have become a Modernised Council.

The move of the data centre to a modern, purpose built location ensures stability and security.  It also gives a rock solid springboard to fulfil the ambition of ‘cloud by default’ – moving from on-premises solutions to hosted or cloud based solutions.  This will make the Council more flexible and will ensure business continuity.  That journey has started with some of the biggest systems being either hosted or in the cloud – HR and Payroll, CRM, WCCIS and email as examples.

The Cabinet Member thanked both SRS for the on-going support and the in-house Digital Team who have responded amazingly well to the challenge of supporting a whole range of services now operating virtually.

The Leader thanked the Cabinet Member and stated that the work of the Newport Intelligence Hub is invaluable; she praised the leadership and expertise of the Newport Intelligence Hub Manager, Shaun Powell, who continues to provide excellent service with regard to the work done in the response to Covid-19.

Decision:

Cabinet voted and unanimously agreed the report.