Agenda item

Invitees:

Rhys Cornwall – Head of People and Business Change

Mark Bleazard – Digital Services Manager

 

The Head of People and Business Change gave a brief overview and stipulated that this was the first digital report to come into scrutiny as the previous one came through during lockdown period of the pandemic. It complements the risk report information so it may duplicate some of the information discussed on the previous item. It is something critically important over the last 18 months for us as an organisation.

 

The purpose of the report is for views on the digital response and how it comes together to work, the officer then reminded the committee that this is not for performance data from Shared Resources Services. That is reviewed by the Partnership Committee and asked the members to steer away any questions from the performance review of SRS staff as it would be unfair due to them not being in the meeting today.

 

The Digital Services Manager noted the number of similarities with the risk report against the backdrop of a pandemic, technology has been of great importance to organisations as it highlights the importance of security and technology in the democratic process by keeping it going.

 

Members were advised that in hindsight, in order to facilitate more flexible and remote working, the council had laptops in the facility for long period of time. Admittedly they did have to scale up a bit to log in remotely in council – with previous logged issues with heavy snow so less people could log in at the time, but the digital services team were able to put things in place to facilitate working remotely quite seamlessly from past experiences.

 

The Committee was informed that the digital team are strategic in forward thinking and Sam Ali and the Digital Services team lead on this. They have internal engagement with Heads of Service of what their problems may be and as previously discussed, the website outage being minimised as much as possible so in all looking to increase their resilience in the strategy.

 

There will be external stakeholders working with Sam Ali in the Digital Team which is linked with other areas such as Shared Resource Services and how the council secures its data and the processes with keeping it secure and mobile with accessing systems from remote locations and handheld devices.

 

The Officer stated that in terms of governance, the partnership with Shared Resource Services is key to delivering service as the digital team require the SRS staff to undertake technical work for us. The SRS team are vital to the delivery of the service and additional funding has been provided for the digital team. Last year it was reported that this funding assisted the team with the replacement of equipment, such as the new laptop replacements for staff and now there is money allocated for migration to the cloud. Additional posts have made a difference to the team as their newcomer has been making positive contributions to the team.

 

The key performance measures were discussed by the Digital Services Manager. Members were shown that the delivery against the service level agreement was well above target. The team needed to work with other areas so were able to work collectively to reflect the way that Shared Resource Services attempt to do their work, for example they understandably now receive a much higher number of calls a day.

 

The officer elaborated on the funding arrangements to the committee to outline how it works. It was pointed out that Shared Resource Services is funded by partner organisations and does not have funding from somewhere else, it comes from contributions. Such conversations about the matter would take place but the officer asked the members to keep it in their understanding that the money that they spend on Newport effectively comes from Newport itself as it needs to be a collaborative arrangement.

The council has contract systems and budgets for other systems within Newport where this gives the digital team some sort of control on spending on some areas.

 

Members were informed that for 2021 to 2022, the digital team have another £250,000 that has been allocated to the budget and that they have initial plans of what to spend this on.

As the officer previously mentioned in the Risk Report, security operations centre and an event security management system has been suggested to enhance the council’s online security with a budget to improve this and it is likely that the council could add more of the data systems to the cloud. Specifically in relation to local schools, the officer explained that the council has contributed significant amounts of money into schools and mentioned that the Assistant Head of Education and Digital Projects Manager did a lot of good work with the team to make a difference in IT provision in schools. The officer gave credit to the Welsh Government for signing the funding into that.

 

The officer informed the committee that they worked in cross sections and got involved in lots of projects with technology pieces for example the test trace and protect service. This was critically important and still is in the fight against the pandemic where some of the solutions they manage incidents by using some of the council’s local systems.

They also used email system and chat facilities and the postal systems via the mail room of the civic centre. The officer also mentioned that there was a HR and payroll project to make most of the system online in order to maximise their investment in that solution.

 

Another positive contribution mentioned by the Digital Services Manager was the work put into the live streaming of services for the Gwent Crematoriums. This infrastructure was not present before the pandemic, much of it was a joint effort of Shared Resources Service and Digital Services.

 

The officer also mentioned that the equipment in committee rooms of the civic centre have been enhanced to improve connectivity with the option of touch screens and webcams installed, as a result there are now more ‘new normal’ facilities to dial in remotely.

 

The Head of People and Business Change added to this that pre pandemic that this equipment was proved invaluable to social services as it was utilised for meetings and interviews. It was there from the Government and Local Elections Act but not just the pandemic.

 

The Digital Services Manager went on to state that the information risk report was agreed by cabinet last October. It was approved for us to move to a new data centre to improve the council’s resilience and part of that will be a shared facility with our partnerships, this will bring about benefits for the collective infrastructure alongside the cloud coming in with two further data systems migrated into it from 2020 to 2021.

 

The Committee was informed that a new financial system is planned for October 2022 on current plans to go live, the cloud hosted this system. With the direction of travel, with the addition of funding support the digital team will be able to be more proactive with this and able to maintain technical solutions.

 

The officer explained that they have already replaced audio visual rooms within the civic however mentioned that the council chambers are a bit more complicated to work with. It was confirmed however, that the council was successful in its funding bid to Welsh Government for the Digital Democracy Fund which was around £52,000 in order to facilitate and upgrade software for that from existing suppliers with a number of enhancements for equipment for council chambers, such as the projectors and sound system facilities.

 

Members were reminded that the council has civic Wi-Fi around the centre in both public buildings and buses. Despite the significant saving target for 2021, this has been raised to 2022 to reduce public Wi-Fi usage but given the situation, they realise with the savings that the digital team will now take a different approach based on impact of pandemic.

 

Digital inclusion is important, and the team are currently looking to make savings with minimal impact on the public Wi-Fi but will not look to remove this service as they previously intended to.

 

The officer recognised impact of the pandemic has had on all aspects of life and explained that the Head of People and Business Change is working with the new normal group and working through democratic services at the moment. To conclude, going forward, the team will continue to work in a different way from pre-pandemic. Members will have their view on which end of the spectrum that this will be but technology will need to still support the new normal.

 

Questions were welcomed from the committee.

 

The Committee asked the following:

 

·         A Member of the committee showed their appreciation for how far the council has come in terms of digital equipment and working methods. With regard to the Track, Trace and Protect Project in the report, the member queried if we have a separate one in Wales, or is it part of the national system? If so, the Member asked the officer to confirm how much the council is involved with that and asked if possible to expand on that considering the logistics of the project, whether it is a reliable system or not.

 

The Digital Services Manager replied that the report is primarily around support for the service rather than for the service for itself.

 

The Head of People and Business Change asserted that the report was a brief overview not within the scope of such projects, but the Track Trace and Project is delivered as a regional board through Local Authorities and Public Health Wales. The council recruited and redeployed a lot of staff which was a fundamental part of the Environmental Health section with mutual aid with the support of Shared Resource Services with the technical equipment to ensure the staff could operate. In hindsight, it was all set up in a very short period of time during June 2020 as part of the national approach but locally, it was a very significant project which relied on local resources and organisational support.

 

·         The Committee then enquired whether it was funded for by the regional board and in terms of cost to the authority, could they quantify their commitment to the project.

 

In response, the Head of People and Business Change confirmed it was a funded service with a budget from Welsh Government to service all aspects of it. However, there are parts that we cannot quantify, which is time. We cannot quantify the Digital Team’s time, the several of digital staff were redeployed into the covid response work, how to manage the stock and setting up equipment and organisational priority to ensure that it operated properly without resource strain but on the whole it was responding to a global pandemic so it was an unprecedented time.

 

·         The Committee asked if the council are prepared for the next annual cycle.

 

The Head of People and Business Change replied that a piece of work is underway, from a February Meeting that came to Cabinet in June on what the approach would be. From a technological point of view, the council digital team has been discussing a range of methods and have been on that enhancement journey for a few years now. The Council had thousands of people working remotely within 3 days of the announcement of a national lockdown in March 2020.This was due to the IT department, the Digital Services team. Members have laptops and iPads, and office 365 which is cloud based.

 

The Lead Officer stressed that not every local authority was lucky enough to be in that position due to the journey that the digital team has been on for years and it paid dividends at that moment in time. The pandemic helped us learn also about key points on how to get work going with provisions in place such as a lockdown.

 

The committee was advised that the team continued to move to the cloud system to improve their resilience and from an IT perspective, the equipment has gone into the committee rooms for hybrid meetings, where a fair few were already in place and the officer stated that the council is well on the road for more developments within the digital strategy.

 

·         A Member commented on the fact that 2000 people working from home was astounding and the foundation laying has certainly paid off and was definitely worthwhile.

The Member asked with regard to the council website;

Who is responsible for the functionality and design? And is there any opportunity to discuss the design in order of finding things more easily?

It was noted that the transparency page previously mentioned was not found before this meeting, even in the pre-meeting we were unable to find the page.

The member then asked if it would be worth having a report on how much usage of the reporting app has increased over the past two years through that platform.

 

The Head of People and Business Change replied that they would do their best to review and develop the council’s web presence. With the current website, its functionality does a lot of things as the system is integrated. With regard to the system, there are 60,000 household accounts. It was explained that they can get information from the relevant customer services group on that data for account numbers and usage.

 

With regard to the technical support, the officer clarified that the service provision and integration is not really within IT’s remit. It involves more of the Shared Resource Services team, Strategic Communication and Marketing on how the council interface and also through the customer services channels via City Services. In short, the council all own a part of it but assured members that work is currently in training to pick that up and create a more improved web presence to look better and work better.

 

·         The Committee mentioned that they would like to see more support for people to use these apps more and stated that an improvement in communication would be good for efficiency savings for instance by reducing the waiting time for the customer services line. The Committee understands there is a telephone line for reporting issues, but they asked if it would be better to be able to have an email address to email IT queries through to?

 

In response, the Digital Services Manager confirmed that they do not have a generic email address for the desk as there is a log system through the Self Service Portal which is managed a lot better through the structure but however appreciates the easiness of an email address option.

 

The Head of People and Business Change acknowledged that it would be an ease of use point but mentioned that Sam Ali a member of the team, is leading on the development of the digital strategy and is working with the WLGA from a digital point of view on how they need to work to make people’s lives better. There seems to be a digital divide, exposed by the pandemic where people cannot access certain things some of us take for granted.

 

The lead officer explained that  savings were previously to be made from removal of public Wi-Fi but now cannot remove that cost as Newport communities now require access more than ever. It was noted that the council will still have individuals who need extra support with technology, but the team are improving on how they can give them their tailored support to free up the resource by improving the channel of reporting generic usual needs that need to be dealt with and resolved quickly.

 

·         The Committee asked how the Shared Resource Service KPIs are determined and if there is a conflict with the services such as police/ambulance services? If so, how are such conflicts resolved?

 

The Digital Services Manager replied that there is a service level agreement which is the same across all partners and is agreed by SRS periodically. Some may need a review to reflect on how they are sorting more calls at the first point of contact but in terms of general principles of performance, they highlighted that their team has a role in working between the council and SRS. For escalations and priorities, the team undertakes a lot of work with Shared Resource Services such as regular forums, strategic boards and the financing board. The Delivery Board was mentioned as they discuss about strategic issues and issues on the day.

Since the pandemic, regular meetings with SRS colleagues have been benefical to discuss pressing issues and now there are much less issues than there were in the early days of the pandemic, for instance with the crematorium live streaming but the council are now in a much better position. This regular dialogue with the partnership with the SRS team is for all of the team’s benefit.

 

The Committee thanked the officers for their time.

 

Conclusions

Following the completion of the Committee reports, the Committee will

be asked to formalise its conclusions, recommendations and

comments on previous items for actioning.

 

The Committee noted the Annual Corporate Safeguarding 2020/21, the Annual Information Risk Report and the Annual Digital Report and wished to make the following comments to the Cabinet:

 

Annual Corporate Safeguarding 2020/2021

·         The Committee wished to recommend more monitoring the resources for the safeguarding team as they appreciated the increased need for it due to the 10% increase of referrals.

·          

The Committee expressed their gratitude for the difficult job that the service area do. It was mentioned that the report itself was more of the operational side and did not give much insight into the underlying difficulties that they face and the issue of the report of the performance measures will not be published until June 2022.

 

The Committee requested that the Corporate Safeguarding provide more details on frequent problems, avoiding the confidentiality risk of certain details being shared.

 

·         The Committee also recommended that they remove the option for the scrutiny committee to comment on the Safeguarding staff structure and if it is fit for purpose. The members felt it would not be for them to comment on such an important structure that they do not have a good understanding of.

Annual Information Risk Report

·         The Committee acknowledged that it was the first time the report came to Scrutiny so the format was more detailed than usual presentations. Members appreciated that the last two presentations were comprehensive.

 

·         The Committee therefore requested that in future, the presentations could be more of a brief overview so they can open up questioning from the scrutiny committee sooner.

 

·         The Committee also recommended for the officers to slim down the reports but were reminded by the Scrutiny Adviser that they have reduced the number of agenda items hence why there is an extra meeting date to ensure the meetings are shorter.

·         Discussion ensued and the Committee requested that the reports could be more slimmed down and the executive summary could be detailed with the main points included to help with questioning.

Annual Digital Report

·         The Committee wished to make the recommendation that FOI requests be kept up to date on the transparency page of the Council website.

 

·         The Committee acknowledged that it would take a large forum for the design of the website to be discussed but wished to recommend that the council considers improving its web presence by making the channels on the website easier to find in order to be more functional and easily accessed, this could also free up officer time with reduced queries.