Meeting documents

A verbal update by the Lead Member for Digital Development and Customer Services.

Councillor Lawrence Wood, Cabinet Member for Digital Development and Customer Services provided the Commission with an update on the Digital First Strategy.

The Digital First Strategy had been considered by Cabinet at its meeting on 18 December 2017.  As the Commission had not had time to scrutinise the Strategy Councillor Wood has set up a Policy Advisory Group (PAG) which included Members of the Commission to provide the opportunity for feedback. This was due to take place just before Christmas however due to the weather conditions this meeting had been cancelled.  It was noted that the next meeting would be taking place on Tuesday 23 January and the Cabinet Member encouraged the PAG members to attend the meeting.

The Cabinet Member explained that there were urgent issues that needed to be addressed by 2019 such as the Capita contract and the withdrawal of support for Windows 10 by Microsoft.  It was noted that the Digital First Strategy, Roadmap and outline business case had been approved by Cabinet.  The transformation budget for the project had been included in the budget but this was yet to be agreed.

Members made a number of queries and responses included the following:

·         In response to a query Councillor Wood noted that it was his intention to invite Cllr Marten Clarke and John McMillan to a meeting to discuss Digital First.

·         Regarding the Modernising Local Government proposal Councillor Wood explained that the other District councils in the County had not been involved in Digital First.  However when future savings were realised then this would be considered.

·         It was noted that the development of Digital First had been a coordinated effort between the Cabinet Member and senior officers.

·         With the current system there was no test environment available however once the servers had been moved to the public cloud then this would be an option.  Also with this option if a user has issues with a system then this could be isolated and should not create a problem for everyone.

·         At stakeholder engagement meetings it was agreed that teams should have a digital champion who would be able to help team members with certain issues.

·         All users should have access to training and it was suggested that all Members receive training before being offered a new device.  This would be discussed at the PAG meeting.

·         With regards to the Capita contract the Cabinet Member explained that this would have to be considered and there was the option in the future to bring some services back in house. He noted that the Customer Service contract had been going well.

Councillor Collingwood confirmed that he has worked closely with the Cabinet Member, and provided feedback to him and the Leader on Digital First. He confirmed he would be attending the PAG meeting on the 23 January 2018.

The Chairman commented that not everyone used IT and some people would still require non-digital support.  In response Councillor Wood confirmed that savings from infrastructure funds would be reinvested to support non-digital schemes.

The Commission thanked the Councillor Wood for the update.